( 
 
ART AND 
 ENVIRONMENT 
 
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 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
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What Greek art lacked and 
 Medieval art contributed 
 
 A STUDY BY V. DE HONNECOURT 
 
 Frontispiece p. 96 
 
ART AND 
 ENVIRONMENT 
 
 BY 
 LISLE MARCH PHILLIPPS 
 
 WITH TWENTY-SIX ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND CO. 
 
 1914 
 
 > 
 
/?// 
 
 Published 191 1 
 New Edition, Revised, with Illustrations, 1914 
 
 Printed in Gkeat Britain by 
 
 BALLANTYNE AND COMPANY ^^^ 
 
 LTD 
 AT THE BALLANTYNE PRESS 
 
 Tavistock Street Covent Garden 
 
 London 
 
PREFACE 
 
 THE following chapters contain nothing but the 
 curtest and most summary outline of the subjects 
 they deal with. I would remind the reader that, in 
 such a survey, detail is out of place, and that to dwell 
 on minute qualifications or partial exceptions to the 
 broad rule followed would merely tend to confusion 
 of thought. Everything depends, in such a bird's- 
 eye view as is here attempted, on whether the main 
 characteristic features have been truly appreciated. 
 1 have, for example, signalised immobility and uni- 
 formity as the characteristics of Egyptian art among 
 the arts of the world. If in that I am right, then it 
 appears to me I must be right also in endeavouring 
 to bring out these positive and salient facts with all 
 available force, and in declining to waste time over 
 partial and temporary exceptions which do but con- 
 fuse the main issue. To act thus is not necessarily 
 to be uninstructed. I am sufficiently familiar with 
 the works of Sir G. Maspero and others during recent 
 years to be aware of some of the slight divergences 
 which from time to time occur in Egyptian art, and 
 of the differences which, as some urge, faintly 
 distinguish the schools of Memphis, Hermopolis, 
 Thebes and the Eastern Delta. But had these 
 trifling inflections and diversities been dwelt upon 
 
PREFACE 
 
 in the two chapters given to Egyptian art what 
 would have been the consequence ? The chief and 
 really significant attributes of that art, its immobility 
 and uniformity as compared with other arts, would 
 have been lost sight of, and the meaning of those 
 attributes and the light they cast on Egyptian 
 character and civilisation never could have been 
 extracted. If what has been stated is true ; if it is 
 true that Egyptian art is unintellectual, and that in 
 this respect it is a perfect image of Egyptian life, 
 then it seems to me that these facts are of sufficient 
 importance as to justify precise statement, while to 
 entangle oneself in insignificant distinctions would 
 render such statement impossible. 
 
 The reader will, I hope, bear this consideration in 
 mind. It applies more or less to all the following 
 chapters, to those especially dealing, besides Egyptian 
 art, with Greek, Arab, Roman and Gothic ; for in 
 each of these it has been my endeavour to seize in 
 the art the racial trait, the gift or characteristic 
 contributed by that people, and which embodies 
 their own racial temperament, and this has to be 
 done, not by frittering away the reader's attention 
 over meaningless and purposeless details, but by 
 going straight to the positive, main attribute, and 
 sticking to that, and wringing the sense out of that. 
 
 One chapter I ought, perhaps, to have rewritten ; 
 I mean the chapter dealing with Greek refinements 
 in architecture. Since it was published there has 
 appeared a book by Mr. Goodyear which throws 
 new light on the subject. Mr. Goodyear shows, by 
 illustration and argument, that the explanation of 
 vi 
 
PREFACE 
 
 these refinements as corrections of optical illusions 
 is not invariably applicable, and cannot be advanced 
 as a final solution. I am not sure that one portion 
 of his reasoning is quite sound. It is scarcely correct 
 to say that Penrose's view was that these inflections 
 were designed as corrections '^ of optical effects of 
 irregularity/' and thence to argue that a strict 
 mechanical regularity must be indicated as the ideal 
 aimed at. What we have to decide when we find, 
 for instance, the Greeks correcting a disagreeable 
 effect of sagging, is whether they are correcting it 
 because it was an appearance of sagging or because 
 it was disagreeable. If the former, if they thought 
 merely of the apparent divergence from regularity 
 and wished to correct that, then strict apparent 
 regularity must, in their eyes, have been a recom- 
 mendation. But if the latter, if they corrected the 
 sag because it was disagreeable to look at, then the 
 end in view is not regularity but the pleasing of the 
 sense of sights 
 
 To this latter view I believe we shall more and 
 more come in dealing with Greek art. Meantime, 
 I have allowed my own chapter on this subject to 
 stand for the present, since as yet the whole matter 
 is more or less in a state of flux and uncertainty. In 
 that chapter I accept as a working hypothesis the 
 theory that the Greek refinements were corrections 
 of optical illusions. Many were so, no doubt, but 
 whether that was their aim and object is another 
 question. Most optical illusions have a weakening, 
 deforming effect which is offensive to the eye, and 
 if they were corrected on this account it would be 
 
 vii 
 
PREFACE 
 
 quite misleading to say that the Greeks had any 
 animus against optical illusions as such. What the 
 Greeks were after in all cases, I believe, was the form 
 and outline most pleasing to the eye. In the case, 
 for instance, of the entasis, or swelling of the shaft, 
 they were not content to add such a convexity as 
 would correct the apparent caving in of a straight- 
 sided column, but to that convexity they give such 
 a contour as would but express vigour and strength, 
 and be therefore most pleasing as a study of form. 
 This, no doubt, was their object from the first. It 
 remains true, of course, that, whether we make the 
 correction of illusion or the search for perfect form 
 the object in view, a unique sensitiveness of vision 
 is equally the indispensable instrument. The reader 
 should make himself acquainted with Mr. Goodyear's 
 works on the subject. 
 
 L. MARCH PHILLIPPS 
 Satwell, 
 
 Henley-on-Thames 
 
 viii 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 THE aim of the present book is easily explained. 
 I have made no attempt to treat art from the 
 aesthetic standpoint, as a realisation of the beauti- 
 ful, and as controlled by principles which have that 
 realisation for their object. My desire has been to 
 confine myself to the consideration of art as an 
 expression of human life and character. Selecting 
 some of the great periods, or creative epochs, in the 
 art of the world, I have endeavoured to deduce from 
 them the distinguishing qualities, limitations, and 
 point of view of the races which produced them. 
 
 The note of style which characterises such epochs, 
 and which declares itself in the coherence and uni* 
 formity of all the aspects and details of their art, 
 is, as we all know, the natural effect of a certain 
 definiteness of inward thought and emotion. Just as 
 coherent speech can only result from coherent and 
 articulate thought, so too coherent art, which is in 
 itself a kind of speech, can only result from a similar 
 mental coherence. The more strongly this coher- 
 ence, or note of style as we call it, is felt in art, the 
 more will the Ufe of that period be dominated by 
 
 ix 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 an equivalent order of ideas. Art is always an ex- 
 pression of life, but it is in proportion as it gathers 
 into the unity of a style that it becomes expressive 
 of collective and social attributes in contradistinction 
 to the petty interests of an art subject to individual 
 caprices. 
 
 These moments then, the moment when art is 
 harmonised into definite styles, are the moments 
 when it is most charged and saturated with human 
 significance. It is at these moments that it incar- 
 nates the spirit of its age, and it is, therefore, at such 
 times that we ourselves may hope to extract most 
 meaning from it. Not often are the minds of men so 
 agreed as to admit of such a unity of expression, but 
 when the agreement takes place and the great styles 
 arise, then there can be found, as it seems to me, no 
 other sort of evidence, or literary or other record, 
 which can for a moment compare in vividness with 
 the testimony of art. Not only are the positive 
 qualities and what is definite and determined in 
 racial character saliently depicted, but, by contrast 
 with what is given, what is not given also — that is to 
 say, the limitations and deficiencies of such character 
 —are just as clearly suggested. 
 
 The interest I seek being of this human kind, I 
 have been led to deal in the following chapters 
 chiefly with architecture, for architecture, being the 
 most broadly human of all the arts, is the richest in 
 X 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 human character. ; In its coming and going across 
 the world-stage each race — Egyptian or Greek, 
 Roman or Goth or Arab — is represented by its own 
 style of building, and these styles arc so patently the 
 personification of racial characteristics that they 
 themselves, in their antagonisms or alliances, seem 
 to possess a living individuality, and to act over 
 again, in a sort of stony Dumb Crambo, the history 
 of their time. Even of the issues of such struggles, 
 and of the degrees in which each human element 
 survived and influenced the rest, the record is 
 faithfully kept by succeeding architecture in the 
 blending of the structural traits proper to each 
 race. 
 
 If to the study of such subjects we would bring 
 nothing of our own ; if, standing within the temple 
 or the mosque or the minster, we would so give 
 ourselves to the forms around us that these should i 
 seem to utter us as completely as they once uttered \ 
 their builders, then we should have attained to the 
 point of view of those vanished generations and 
 should see and know them as they are. 
 
 I do not say this can be done. I am sure that 
 I have not succeeded in doing it^ The following 
 attempted interpretations are sure to be full of 
 defects, and, as is the way of criticism, probably 
 most clearly reveal their author's limitations when 
 they insist on the limitations of others. Nevertheless 
 
 xi 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 I cannot help feeling sure that art really possesses 
 this power of instilling into us the spirit of a past 
 time and people. The treasure sought is there, and 
 if these scratchings fail to reveal the extent of it, they 
 may perhaps show others where to dig deeper and 
 with more success. 
 
 Most of the material of this book has appeared in 
 articles in the Edinburgh and Contemporary Reviews, 
 and I desire to express my sincere thanks to the 
 editors of those periodicals for their kindness in 
 allowing me to make the present use of it. 
 
 It is difficult, I may add, when applying the same 
 theory to various circumstances, entirely to avoid 
 repetition. I have done my best in this direction, 
 but where clearness of treatment seemed to demand 
 it, I have thought it better to repeat myself than 
 risk obscurity. 
 
 L. MARCH PHILLIPPS 
 Satwell, 
 
 H E NLEY-ON-Th AMES 
 
 xu 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 THE TEMPLES OF EGYPT 
 
 Two views of art : Mr. Blomfield's estimate of Egyptian 
 architecture : In what respects this estimate appears to be 
 exaggerated : Character of Egyptian structural features : 
 Their non-intellectual form : The Egyptian and Greek 
 column contrasted : The value of Egyptian architecture 
 as a comment on Egyptian life and character : The for- 
 malism of old Egypt, limitations of its civilisation : 
 Religion : Literature : Science : Medicine : Its inability 
 to develop beyond the primitive phase : These limitations 
 reflected in art : The power in Egyptian art of usage and 
 routine : How in its patient reiteration of old conventions 
 it mirrors the life of the Nile valley Pp. 1-4 1 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE TYRANNY OF THE NILE 
 
 The river's part in Egypt : The art and civilisation of Egypt 
 cast in the same mould as the country : Dependence of 
 Egypt on the Nile : Character of that dependence : Nil6 
 fertilisation and Nile rule : All occupations, all hopes and 
 fears dominated by the Nile : The labours of the 
 Egyptians regulated by its movements from month to 
 month : It turns life into the repetition of a perpetual 
 formula : Compare the rival river-civilisation of Assyria : 
 The similarity in circumstances and routine of life : 
 
 xiii 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Similarity also in art : Limitations of Assyrian and 
 Egyptian art identical : Each stops at the point where 
 intellect should exert its informing power : It is so, too, 
 in life and character : The influences which dominate 
 Egypt focussed in her temples Pp. 42-73 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 ENTER THE GREEK 
 
 The new factor at work : The movement in Greek archaic art 
 an intellectual movement : The Greek point of view : 
 Intellectual bias of the Greek mind : In what respects 
 sculpture is calculated to express that bias : The Greek 
 instinct for definition : Its restrictions and limitations : 
 Greek religion : The Greek idea of death : Gods and 
 tombs : Greek poetry : Analogy between Myron and 
 iEschylus, Phidias and Sophocles : What Greek art 
 cannot give Pp. 74-98 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 WHAT ART MEANT TO THE GREEKS 
 
 Greek and Gothic art compared : Gothic architecture a 
 picture of contemporary Hfe : Aloofness of the Doric temple 
 from such life : What hold had it on Greek life ? : The 
 aesthetic sense as a source of ideas : Proportion, harmony, 
 unity at once aesthetic and ethical principles : Similarity 
 between the eye and the mind : Hence possibility of 
 appealing to the mind through the eye — e.g. an image of 
 harmony, unity, &c., presented to the eye will stimulate a 
 mental recognition of those principles - Use the Greeks, 
 made of this thought : Doric architecture an embodiment 
 of the ethical conceptions which governed Greek life 
 
 Pp. 99-123 
 
 XIV 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE LAST WORD IN CLASSIC 
 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 Santa Sophia : In what the building is unique : Its vindica- 
 tion of the idea of arch construction : Romans had 
 misused that principle : The Roman jumble of arcuated and 
 trabeated construction : The Greeks deliver the arch from 
 this confusion and proceed to develop its intrinsic possi- 
 biUties : Santa Sophia is the result : It is rather to be 
 looked upon as the last word on classic building than as 
 the inauguration of a new style : Though commonly 
 regarded as the type of Byzantine it does not pursue the 
 Byzantine ideal : It is not an architecture of colour nor 
 in agreement with other Byzantine buildings in its mode 
 of exhibiting colour : It is animated rather by the old 
 imperial spirit of amplitude and order, but it expresses its 
 idea with a new logic and power : All that Roman archi- 
 tecture tried to be and could not is attained in Santa 
 Sophia : As a summing up of the classical era it is a signal 
 illustration of the part which the Greek genius had 
 played in that era Pp. 124-146 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 THE ARAB IN ARCHITECTURE 
 
 Arab architecture as a presentment of Arab character : Living 
 qualities of the race : Its terrific energy combined with 
 fickleness and instability : All Arab enterprise to this 
 day marked by same combination : Arab war : Arab 
 science and scholarship and civilisation generally : Their 
 rapid but evanescent achievements : Testimony of their 
 buildings : Their hatred of all steadfast and stable forms : 
 Fate of the round arch in their hands : Their destructive 
 impulse : Their inability to construct : Their tendency to 
 the fantastic and whimsical : The structural forms of 
 Arab buildings are the racial traits in their living image 
 
 Pp. 147-167 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 THE GOTHIC CONTRIBUTION 
 
 The energy of Gothic architecture and in what that energy 
 consists : The side-thrust of the arch : Its unsleeping 
 activity : The Gothic delight in this characteristic : The 
 eagerness with which the Gothic races exhibited and 
 enhanced by all possible means the activity of the arch 
 principle : Loftiness of their vaults : Dangerous character 
 of side-thrusts which they provoked and met : Buttresses 
 and flying buttresses : The visible conflict betwixt stone 
 and human energy : Participation of Gothic detail in the 
 structural motive : Ribs, mouldings, &c., used to indicate 
 the arch pressures and explain to the eye how they 
 converge and how they are withstood : This structural 
 activity the image of a racial activity : Part played by 
 the Gothic race : Roman apathy : The quickening and 
 vitalising influence of the barbarian invasions : The 
 Gothic ideal in life : The revitalising of the old Roman 
 system was the cardinal event in post-classic life : How 
 it worked out and formed the basis of the national 
 system : How having worked itself out in life it was ripe 
 to embody itself in art : The twelfth century in England 
 and France : The moment of triumph of the Gothic ideal : 
 That triumph in all its completeness depicted in Gothic 
 architecture Pp. 168-206 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE RISE OF THE RENAISSANCE 
 
 The vertical and horizontal styles of architecture : What 
 they stand for : Energy idealised in the twelfth century : 
 Chivalry, ballad poetry, crusades, Gothic architecture : 
 Break-up of the system before advance of intellect : 
 The classic note in architecture : Its breadth : Corre- 
 spondence of the quality with classic intellectualism : 
 Spaciousness of classic thought and classic buildings : 
 Survival of this trait among Latin races : Italy's reception 
 
 xvi 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 of the Gothic style : Consistency of her criticism : She 
 insists on horizontal expansion : Rejects (Gothic as 
 inadequate to intellectual ideas : Revives classic pro- 
 portions as more appropriate : The case of France : In- 
 tellectual awakening there, too, followed by adoption of 
 spacious forms : The Renaissance in England : Its insular 
 character : The expansion or contraction of architecture 
 expresses the play of the mind of Europe Pp. «07-24i 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 SCULPTURE AND THE MODERN MIND 
 
 Breakdown of classic intellectualism : West and East in 
 contact : The West imbibes the Eastern thought of 
 spiritual vision : Effect seen in Hellenistic sculpture : 
 Character of that sculpture : Its now indefinite hopes 
 and fears : Loss of the old serenity and calm : Parallel 
 between Hellenistic and Renaissance art : The Floren- 
 tine intellectualism : The presence of a spiritual religion in 
 the midst of it : Consequent inability to realise the classic 
 ideal : Savonarola : His teaching and influence : Lorenzo 
 the Magnificent : Blending of spiritual and pagan 
 motives : Michelangelo : The conflict in his art between 
 the act of definition and thought which refuses definition : 
 He expresses the conflicting ideals of his age 
 
 Pp. 3425-265 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 PAINTING AND THE INTELLECTUAL 
 
 MOVEMENT 
 
 Manual dexterity of modern art : Consequent superabun- 
 dance and confusion of subject-matter : Contrast with 
 earlier creative epochs : These were protected from 
 redundancy by their own ignorance : They had not our 
 fatal executive facility : Course of Italian painting from 
 Giotto to Raphael : Development of painting keeps pace 
 
 xvii 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 with intellectual development : The new precision and 
 accuracy of intellectual vision : Seeing with the mind : 
 Need of this in order to realise and represent naturally : 
 By what degrees the eyes of men during the Renaissance 
 were opened : Man himself the centre of the movement : 
 Renaissance art realises first man, then man's handiwork, 
 and finally nature : It keeps pace in its progress with the 
 intellectual advance of the age Pp. 266-284 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE ART OF AN ARISTOCRACY 
 
 The question of style : Style in French furniture : What con- 
 stitutes it : The luxury of this furniture its sole reason for 
 existence : French society in the age of Louis XV. : 
 Luxury and frivolity the governing motives of its every 
 action : Aspect of France and of French policy in that 
 age : French colonisation in the East and West : French 
 campaigns : Decline of the military spirit : The reign of 
 corruption : Diderot and the Encyclopaedists : The 
 seriousness of the Court etiquette : Total severance of 
 French aristocratic life from all real practical considera- 
 tions : Its approaching doom and the terror that hangs 
 over it : The visible manifestation of these ideas 
 embodied in its characteristic art Pp. 285-316 
 
 SUMMARY Pp. 317-327 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY Pp. 3^8-343 
 
 XVI 11 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 What Greek Art lacked and Medieval Art 
 
 CONTRIBUTED Fr*Htispi$ct 
 
 Egyptian Columns a;nd Capitals la 
 
 Apollo. Archaic Greek 76 
 
 Tomb of Hegeso 87 
 
 Gothic Tomb 8g 
 
 Parthenon Frieze 92 
 
 Temple of Theseus 116 
 
 Acropolis ia« 
 
 St. Sophia X38 
 
 Great Mosque of Kairwan (Arcades) x6a 
 
 Great Mosque of Kairwan (Interior) 163 
 
 Sahara Village 164 
 
 Interior of Mosque. Cordova i6d 
 
 Reims Cathedral 174 
 
 Beauvais Cathedral. Apse 176 
 
 French Gothic Choir aoo 
 
 Vault of Exeter Cathedral 204 
 
 Warrior's Head (late Greek) 248 
 
 Miracle of the Rain 250 
 Gothic Sculpture, Detail of Head from Reims 
 
 Cathedral 254 
 
 Visitation, Luca della Robbia 256 
 
 Michelangelo. Portrait 260 
 
 Detail from Monument of Lorenzo (i) 262 
 
 Detail fro^ Sistine Chapel (n) 262 
 
 Detail from Sistine Chapel (i) 264 
 
 Adam and Eve (n) 264 
 
 The Author has to thank Mr. B. T. Batsford frr 
 permissitn to include among the illustrations the two 
 f holographs of Greek temples which are taken from. 
 " The Architecture of Greece and Rome'' by IV, /, 
 Anderson and R. Pheni Spiers. 
 The drawing of Santa Sophia is reproduced from 
 Blomfields*' Studies in Architecture" by permission 
 
 of Mr. y, B. Fulton and Messrs. Macmillan. ^cjx 
 
CHAPTER I 
 THE TEMPLES OF EGYPT 
 
 Two views of art : Mr. Blomfield's estimate of Egyptian 
 architecture : In what respects this estimate appears to be 
 exaggerated : Character of Egyptian structural features : 
 Their non-intellectual form : The Egyptian and Greek column 
 contrasted : The value of Egyptian architecture as a comment 
 on Egyptian life and character : The formalism of old Egypt, 
 limitations of its civilisation : Religion : Literature : Science : 
 Medicine : Its inability to develop beyond the primitive 
 phase : These limitations reflected in art : The power in 
 Egyptian art of usage and routine : How in its patient 
 reiteration of old conventions it mirrors the life of the 
 Nile valley 
 
 RESULTS of two very different kinds may be 
 obtained from the study of art. Either we may 
 obtain an insight into the laws and principles of art 
 itself, or we may obtain an insight into the lives and 
 characters of those by whom the art was evolved. 
 Unity, symmetry, proportion, the subordination of 
 the parts to the whole are among the ideas asso- 
 ciated with the former, the aesthetic point of view, 
 while the relations of man to his Maker, his mental 
 development, and the occupations and pursuits of 
 his daily life are among the ideas belonging to the 
 latter, or human point of view. The two sets 
 of ideas are quite distinct. It is not every school 
 of art which possesses any definite aesthetic sig- 
 nificance at all. Not many races have seriously 
 considered the problems of unity, symmetry and 
 
 A 
 
•:;;::V::: T^ WORKS OF MAN 
 proportion, and in the works of not many races are 
 the answers to such problems embodied. On the 
 other hand, be the aesthetic value of any kind of art 
 what it may, its human interest is an assured factor. 
 This is always present : nor, perhaps, will it be 
 found that there ever survives to later generations 
 a more graphic and convincing record of the life of 
 past races and ages than is contained in the charac- 
 teristic art through which that Hfe was uttered. 
 
 We may go even a step farther. Not only are 
 these rival interests in art often disjoined and 
 opposed to each other, but it happens frequently 
 that what we must admit, from the aesthetic stand- 
 point, to be the defects and blemishes of a style 
 will be actually the chief source of its human 
 interest and significance. No one, for example, 
 would, I suppose, deny that the restless and fan- 
 tastic impulses of Arab architecture, rendered as 
 they are in bad brickwork or crumbling masonry, 
 are, aesthetically speaking, a defect and a blemish ; 
 but, at the same time, no one can consider the style 
 as an embodiment of the Arab character and tem- 
 perament without being led to perceive that all that 
 is most lifelike and convincing in its interpretation 
 consists in those very qualities which are an 
 esthetic disfigurement. This being so, it is evi- 
 dently the first condition of sane criticism to dis- 
 tinguish clearly between methods of analysis which 
 yield such totally different results. We must know 
 in what sense we are to understand the critic's 
 language, and whether the return yielded by the art 
 in question is in the nature of aesthetic pleasure or 
 human interest. Yet this necessary condition of 
 
THE TEMPLEwS OF EGYPT 
 sane criticism is, as a matter of fact, very rarely 
 attended to. I could point out to the reader at 
 least fifty books on Gothic architecture the greater 
 number of which, so far from attempting to dis- 
 criminate between the interest of the style as a 
 record of mediaeval life and its value as an embodi- 
 ment of aesthetic laws and principles, mix, involve, 
 and transpose the two kinds of criticism in such a 
 way that the merits of one kind often come out, by 
 a sort of jugglery, as the merits of the other. The 
 result of this confusion usually is, that not only is 
 aesthetic language more than ever obscured but 
 that the especial merit and use of the art dealt with, 
 as a vigorous representation of life, is also hidden 
 from us. To praise a thing for what it has not got 
 is the surest way of hiding from us what it has got. 
 Led off on a false scent we lose sight of what the 
 subject really has to offer, and by the time w^e have 
 discovered that its aesthetic pretensions are more or 
 less of a myth, we have forgotten that it ever had 
 any other claim to our notice. 
 
 In a collection of lectures recently published by 
 Mr. Blomfield, under the title of "The Mistress 
 Art," there occurs an analysis of Egyptian archi- 
 tecture which, as it seems to me, is prone to fall 
 into this error of praising on the wrong grounds. 
 Mr. Blomfield is well known as one who writes, not 
 only with technical knowledge but thoughtfully 
 and suggestively, on architectural matters. There is 
 the less need, therefore, to say that the essays form- 
 ing the present volume are, in general, full of ideas 
 which will repay a careful study. This being pre- 
 mised, I may pass at once to the point I desire to 
 
 3 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 examine. Mr. Blomfield treats Egyptian architec- 
 ture as a style of first-rate aesthetic excellence and 
 power. Nothing is said of any other interest it 
 may possess; but it is, we are given clearly to 
 understand, in what it attains to as an expression 
 of aesthetic laws and principles that its main value 
 for us consists. It seems to me that this process 
 of reasoning should be reversed. It appears very 
 doubtful whether Egyptian architecture, or Egyp- 
 tian art in general, was based on any clear knowledge 
 of aesthetic principles, and whether, consequently, 
 it has any aesthetic teaching to communicate to 
 us. On the other hand, if the Egyptian temples 
 have little aesthetic value, they have another merit 
 of almost equal consequence. They shed an 
 extraordinarily vivid light not only on the daily 
 lives and habits of the Egyptians but on their 
 characters and on their mental attributes and limi- 
 tations. They enable us in some degree to realise 
 what we may call the Egyptian point of view, and 
 perhaps even to allocate to the Nile civilisation its 
 approximate place among the civilisations of the 
 world. This interpretative interest Egyptian art, and 
 more particularly Egyptian architecture, possesses, 
 and this interest Mr. Blomfield's aesthetic treatment 
 of the subject tends inevitably to obscure. 
 
 Let us, to begin with, see what it is exactly that 
 Mr. Blomfield finds in Egyptian architecture. He 
 treats the subject in a chapter entitled "The Grand 
 Manner," and in this chapter the Nile temples are 
 coupled and equalled with the Doric temple of the 
 Greeks in the degree and kind of aesthetic insight 
 they exhibit. We know what the qualities are which 
 
 4 
 
THE TEMPLES OF EGYPT 
 the champions of the grand manner have always 
 claimed for it ; they are the great classic qualities 
 of unity, proportion and the subordination of the 
 parts to the whole design. These are the merits 
 Mr. Blomfield finds in the Egyptian style. He 
 praises it for " the lessons it teaches of finely con- 
 sidered mass, and of the effect to be got by the 
 simplest form of construction properly handled." 
 He alludes to a *' central idea " which " is never 
 sacrificed to detail, but serenely maintains its sway, 
 undisputed and irresistible." It is here that he finds 
 the analogy between the Egyptian and Greek styles, 
 " this architectonic quality, this perfect instinct for 
 organic design," being the attribute common to both. 
 The same profound intellectual insight, according to 
 Mr. Blomfield, directs the Egyptian artists in their 
 elaboration of detail and application of ornament. 
 ^The carving is of admirable low relief, firm in out- 
 line and consummate in drawing, but reduced to 
 the most abstract expression in modelling." He 
 adds, what would seem a natural conclusion, that 
 "such skill was only possible to artists steeped in 
 an immemorial tradition of art, and intent on the 
 expression of a great monumental theme." Finally, 
 he concludes with the tribute, the highest attainable 
 by the most intellectualised of the arts, that "not 
 the least remarkable characteristic of Egyptian art 
 is the stringent logic that governed it in every 
 detail." 
 
 This is high praise, higher praise, so far as I 
 know, than has ever yet been vouchsafed to the 
 buildings of Egypt. At the same time it is definite 
 praise. Mr. Blomfield does not admire Egyptian 
 
 5 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 
 architecture for those vague picturesque effects 
 which are common in the massive and archaic 
 structures of primitive races, and which, as we feel, 
 however striking in their way, are accidental rather 
 than consciously thought out. The grandeur of 
 Karnak to Mr. Blomfield is not a bit the grandeui 
 of Stonehenge. The Egyptian genius is made out 
 to be as essentially intellectual as the Greek. Such 
 phrases as "finely considered," a "central idea," 
 forms " properly handled," a faculty for " organic 
 design," a sense of "stringent logic," and so on, 
 conclusively prove — indeed it is the drift of the 
 whole lecture — that in the author's estimation 
 Egyptian artists grasped their purpose and foresaw 
 results with clear, intellectual vision. Karnak is 
 instanced as the Egyptian Parthenon. To the 
 present writer, reflecting on Mr. Blomfield's praises 
 of the building for clear-thoughted larticulation and 
 knowledge of the effect to be produced, there cannot 
 but recur the recollection of repeated visits once 
 paid to this colossal shrine, visits which served to 
 confirm a slow-grown suspicion that Egyptian art 
 contained in truth nothing intellectual, that its 
 massiveness was a triumph of matter over mind, and 
 its power the power of blind routine. In place, 
 however, of my own opinion let me quote on this 
 point a remark or two from the criticism of a 
 recognised and high authority. Mr. Blomfield extols 
 Karnak's grandiose simplicity, its carefully con- 
 sidered scheme and the cumulative effect of its halls 
 and colonnades. He represents to our imagination 
 — it belongs to his intellectual estimate of the style — 
 a master intellect brooding over the whole design 
 
 6 
 
THE TEMPLES OF EGYPT 
 and directing it all to the embodiment of a single 
 idea. Herr Erman, on the contrary, observes that 
 " the fact that the plans of the temples seem to us 
 most complicated arises from the circumstance that 
 they were not built from one design. Temples 
 such as Luxor, or more particularly Karnak, owe 
 the development of their plan to the many hands 
 which have worked at them. Each king, fired with 
 ambition to build, designed some new addition to 
 the temple of the Theban Amon ; he wished his 
 plan if possible to surpass any previous project, but 
 it was granted to few to complete the work they 
 had designed. Thothmes I. erected his pylon at 
 Karnak and thought thus to have completed the 
 fagade for ever ; he also began, but never finished, 
 those splendid buildings intended to meet this 
 fa9ade, and to unite the great temple with the 
 temple of Mut. Amenhotep IH. spoilt this plan 
 by adding another pylon in front, and the kings of 
 the nineteenth dynasty went so far as to place their 
 gigantic hypostyle hall before this latter pylon, so 
 that the fa9ade of the eighteenth dynasty was left in 
 the very centre of the temple ; a new pylon (the 
 fourth), greater than any other, formed the entrance. 
 Incredible as it may appear, the temple was not yet 
 complete ; when Rameses III. built his little temple 
 to the Theban gods, he placed it, in part, close in 
 front of the fagade of the great temple. Afterwards 
 the Libyan princes felt it their duty to build an 
 immense hall of pillars in front again, which, 
 curiously enough, happened exactly to cross the 
 temple of Rameses III. If we consider that at the 
 same time similar additions were made to the back 
 
 7 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 of the temple and to the interior, we gain a slight 
 idea of the extreme confusion of the whole/' 
 
 It is difficult to see how any ordered and cumula- 
 tive effect can result from such a chaos as this. 
 Where there is no unity of intention there can be 
 no unity of result. 
 
 Like all intensely materialistic races, the Egyptians 
 were immensely impressed by mere bulk and extent. 
 It was in the knowledge how to animate that bulk 
 with an intellectual expression that they failed, and 
 in this respect the most characteristic of all their 
 productions is, no doubt, the pyramids. It would 
 probably not be possible to find on the earth's sur- 
 face buildings so vast yet so vacant of expression of 
 any kind. They do not even express their own 
 size, for the pyramidal or triangular outline carries 
 the eye to its apex with such instant rapidity that 
 the passage thereto seems no distance at all ; and 
 so, though we tell ourselves that the Great Pyramid 
 covers thirteen acres and is taller than the dome of 
 St. Peter's, though we walk round it and painfully 
 climb up it, and impress by all means its bulk upon 
 our minds, yet as an object of sight the building does 
 not remain in the memory as of any considerable 
 size. The idea of the pyramid suggests not great- 
 ness but a point, and is adequately represented by 
 its image on a post card. If it leave a further im- 
 pression on the mind, it must be one of wonder 
 at the dullness, amounting, it would seem, to the 
 atrophy of the intellectual faculties, which it indicates 
 as characteristic of its builders. A uniform, solid 
 triangle of masonry, mechanically accurate and 
 utterly expressionless in its dead monotony, without 
 8 
 
THE TEMPLES OF EGYPT 
 any intelligible purpose, as is now admitted, save 
 the stupid and ignoble one of hiding a wretched 
 corpse within its bowels — that, I believe, is an 
 architectural phenomenon absolutely without a 
 parallel. It is true that the fine cutting and fitting 
 of the masonry indicate qualities which have always 
 been the basis, as it were, of great structural effects. 
 But they have been a foundation only. Perfect 
 masonry represents a skill of the hand which must 
 be directed by thought to great designs, but which 
 in the present case is not so directed. 
 
 It is important to remember, when we are con- 
 sidering Egyptian art, that there is a primitive 
 simplicity as well as an intellectual simplicity. The 
 pyramids are simple, more simple even than the 
 temples ; but theirs is not the Greek simplicity. 
 It does not arise from a keen perception of the 
 significance of a structural principle and a resolve 
 to extract from it its full emphasis and power, but 
 merely denotes a mind barren of ideas and content 
 with its barrenness. The Greeks discarded irrele- 
 vancies and conflicting theories, and reduced 
 construction to its simplest law, because they 
 realised that the great aesthetic effects of unity, 
 symmetry and proportion depend, in the last 
 resort, on singleness of structural idea. They 
 selected the column and lintel as their structural 
 idea, and worked out from it results in the way 
 of unity, symmetry and proportion which they 
 expressed with an intellectual subtlety and refine- 
 ment never before or since equalled. But it is, 
 of course, quite possible that the column-and-lintel 
 principle should be adopted and persisted in for 
 
 9 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 centuries, not from any perception of its aesthetic 
 possibilities, but merely because it happens to be 
 the most obvious of all means of construction. It 
 was thus Egypt used it. The Egyptian builders 
 remained , faithful to their principle, but it never 
 was, for them, a source of inspiration and thought ; 
 nor did it ever occur to them apparently to develop 
 the aesthetic possibilities latent within it. The dis- 
 tended and bloated-looking columns, the squat and 
 stunted architraves of the Egyptian temples, are 
 related by no law of proportion. They are forms 
 which have not reached the state of development 
 at which aesthetic expression becomes possible. 
 The old sense of a fixed limitation, of an art held 
 for ever in leading-strings, recurs again. The fine 
 qualities Mr. Blomfield discerns in Egyptian archi- 
 tecture ought, indeed, to be there, for they are the 
 proper fruit of the simple law of construction on 
 which the style is based ; but, unfortunately, the 
 capacity necessary to draw them out was lacking. 
 The Egyptian simplicity is really not of the intel- 
 lectual but of the primitive order. It is the effect 
 not of clear thought but of absence of thought. 
 If the Egyptians were well content to go on loading 
 their bulky shafts with bulky architraves, it was not 
 because they derived from the practice any kind of 
 intellectual satisfaction, but because they were quite 
 content to go without any such satisfaction. Under 
 the dominion of an inflexible routine, incapable of 
 initiation because incapable of thought, the Egyptian 
 architects perpetuated for thousands of years a style 
 which testifies convincingly to the low stage of 
 intellectual development attained by the race. 
 
 lO 
 
Observe^ not bulbous forms of shafts only, but hankerifig after 
 water plants and buds used as capitals and decoratively 
 
 A lo 
 
THE TEMPLES OF EGYPT 
 These, however, are general arguments, and as 
 such they yield indefinite results. I must approach 
 closer to the subject and lay hold of it by a con- 
 crete fact if I am to carry the reader with me in my 
 interpretation of Egyptian art. This can be done. 
 It is a convenient characteristic of trabeated archi- 
 tecture that the column, being of such an over- 
 whelming importance in it and attracting careful 
 treatment proportionate to its conspicuousness, 
 should become, as it were, the touchstone of the 
 style it appears in, and should sufficiently sum up 
 its general character and level of attainment. 
 There could be no more convincing testimony to 
 the intellectual character of Greek architecture 
 than the form and contour of a Doric shaft ; and if 
 Egyptian architecture were the intellectual product 
 Mr. Blomfield supposes, the fact is sure to be 
 revealed in the form given to the chief supporting 
 members of that architecture. 
 
 To the Egyptian column, then, we will have 
 recourse ; but before doing so let me remind the 
 reader of the simple law which, in so far as archi- 
 tectural forms are intelligible to us at all, directs their 
 development. This law is to the effect that struc- 
 tural forms must be the expression of the structural 
 purpose they fulfil. Whatever the purpose may be, 
 whether it be to support, to span, to vault, to with- 
 stand pressure, or what not, the resulting forms of 
 column, architrave, arch, buttress, and so on must 
 be that purpose embodied. Form, in a word, is 
 function, and in Western art, at least, no other law 
 of origin is admitted. If we find in primitive struc- 
 tures forms which have the clumsy and uncouth 
 
 II 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 aspect which are the marks of such an epoch, such 
 rudeness of form is but the measure of their builders' 
 rudeness of thought. It is proof that in the mind of 
 the architect there existed no clear intellectual per- 
 ception of the nature of the forces which were his 
 instruments. The direction and amount of his 
 vault-thrusts, the bearing capacity of his columns, 
 and all the various means of exertion and adjust- 
 ment which were to raise and knit together his 
 structure are comprehended only vaguely and inde- 
 finitely. It is this vagueness and indefiniteness of 
 intellectual comprehension which, communicating 
 itself to the forms employed, results in that clumsiness 
 which we associate with primitive buildings. By 
 degrees, with practice and the comparison of many 
 experiments, architects attain a greater exactitude of 
 knowledge. The range and limits of the invisible 
 forces manipulated are more clearly revealed, and it 
 is in proportion as they are understood as ideas that 
 they approach towards purity and exactitude of form. 
 Thus it is that architecture is recognised in the West 
 as the most intellectual of the arts ; for whereas 
 painting and sculpture are more concerned with 
 representation than with the evolution of original 
 forms, architecture, if it cannot be said precisely to 
 invent the forms it employs, yet does invest with 
 bodily substance forms which pre-existed only as 
 ideas. It is true that, in the sphere of decorative 
 detail, a certain licence is claimed ; but there is no 
 more certain sign of the decadence of a style than 
 when the natural or other forms imitated, instead of 
 being severely subdued to structural requirements, 
 are permitted to assert their own character too freely, 
 
 12 
 
THE TEMPLES OF EGYPT 
 
 In the purest of all styles — namely, the Doric — the 
 intellectual idea of function reigns absolutely, even 
 the capitals, so often selected for special treatment 
 and carved with the likeness of foliage and animals, 
 being abstact studies of appropriate form and nothing 
 else. But though not invariably enforced with the 
 Doric thoroughness, the rule holds good in the main 
 through all Western architecture. The structural 
 features of Western architecture are intellectual 
 creations, in the sense that their form is the intel- 
 lectually realised embodiment of the function they 
 fulfil. 
 
 Against one objection indeed it may be well to 
 guard ourselves. The aesthetic element in architec- 
 ture must not be overlooked. It is, or ought to be, the 
 aim of structural forms not only to be but to appear 
 to the eye to be perfectly adapted to their function; 
 To appearance something is conceded. The flutes 
 of a Doric column, or the slight and invisible swell 
 which modifies its outline, do not perhaps add to 
 the actual strength of the column, but they add to 
 its apparent strength. Function is still the inspira- 
 tion, but now from an intellectual it becomes an 
 cesthetic motive. It is not enough that the column 
 be perfectly adapted to its use ; it must also, in ex- 
 pression and bearing, exhibit its own knowledge of, 
 and delight in, the service it performs. If this involves 
 separate treatment, the same principles continue to 
 inspire that treatment. Thus it will be seen that the 
 objection raised is really a confirmation of our rule 
 that architectural forms are to be determined by 
 what they have to do. Conceived intellectually, the 
 rule is carried out aesthetically, and having first 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 defined form it then proceeds to endow it with 
 beauty. 
 
 Such is the rule in the West; but it applies to 
 the West only. The non-intellectual character of 
 Oriental architecture is shown in nothing more 
 clearly than in its use of eccentric and fantastic 
 forms of which the origin is non-functional and does 
 not lie within the art of architecture. The'Egyptian 
 column is a feature of this kind. The most character- 
 istic example, which for many centuries dominated 
 the architecture of the Nile and is its natural and 
 sufficient representative, is wrought into a rude 
 imitation of the lotus plant. The thick stalk swells 
 bulb-like out of a calyx or sheath of pointed leaves, 
 and terminates in a ponderous bud by way of capital.* 
 The shape thus given to the column is approximately 
 the shape of a gigantic sausage — that is to say, it is 
 of great bulk throughout, except at the base, where 
 it suddenly and violently contracts. Now, the base 
 of a column is precisely the point where its strength 
 should be greatest ; for, since it is evident that 
 no part of the column can exceed the strength of 
 the base, any weakness there cripples inevitably 
 the whole body. Not by such means is support 
 afforded, nor could the idea of affording support 
 ever have called such a shape into being. Mr. 
 Blomfield does indeed profess to derive even from 
 such forms as these certain genuine intellectual 
 impressions. " Eternal strength," he says, "gigantic 
 strength," is the idea they convey to him. Strength 
 is a column's chief endowment, and a form which 
 perfectly expressed strength would, according to all 
 * See Frontispiece. 
 
 H 
 
THE TEMPLES OF EGYPT 
 Western notions, be an admirable forrn for a column. 
 But Mr. Blomfield will scarcely suggest that bulk 
 and strength are the same thing. He will not affirm 
 that bulk which is obviously redundant and can be 
 pared away to almost any extent is strength. But 
 if he will not affirm this, he cannot affirm that 
 Egyptian columns express strength, for it is palpably 
 the case that a vast amount of their substance is 
 mere adipose tissue, and is not and cannot be turned 
 to account as strength at all. Indeed, it is not 
 enough to say that these columns do not express 
 strength, they do not express even the natural hard- 
 ness of the stone they are built of. It is actually 
 the fact, and no more curious instance of the influence 
 of form on material could perhaps be cited, that 
 Egyptian columns, owing to their bulging shape, 
 convey to the spectator an impression of softness. 
 Resting on their diminished bases, their swollen 
 masses have the distended and, so to speak, dropsical 
 aspect of matter divorced from energy. Such forms 
 as these strike the European mind as abortions 
 because they were not evolved by and do not 
 express the function they perform. The giant 
 shapes of the columns of Luxor and Karnak convey 
 no idea of a definite power exercised or a definite 
 duty fulfilled. Their bloated proportions, in the 
 dim obscurity of the place, suggest nothing more 
 structural than a crop of extravagant fungi, in growth 
 commensurate to the damp depths of Nile soil and 
 the forcing capacity of an Egyptian sun, but not 
 calculated in obedience to any architectural purpose. 
 According, then, to Western ideas, these Egyptian 
 columns are not columns at all — that is to say, they 
 
 15 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 have not the form of columns. To find the form of 
 the columns in these masses of matter we should 
 have to dig for it. Somewhere concealed within the 
 imitation of the lotus lie the proportions which 
 correspond with the column's function of support, 
 and which constitute its intellectual form, but they 
 are not apparent. 
 
 And now will the reader ask himself by what 
 means such features as I have described can co- 
 operate in any general scheme based on the inter- 
 relation of its various parts? Interrelation of parts 
 is expressed in the law of proportion, and trabeated 
 architecture is chiefly effective in this, that in the 
 sharp distinction drawn between burden and support, 
 or horizontal and upright, it offers the eye an oppor- 
 tunity of gauging, with great exactness, the propor- 
 tion of the one to the other. But how can this be 
 done with a supporting member which does not 
 express its own strength— nay, which disguises and 
 conceals its strength ? What is the burden that 
 shall exactly fit a force which evades definition ? 
 Is it not evident that unless the upright first clearly 
 expresses its own capacity the horizontal cannot 
 possibly be brought into a proportionate relation- 
 ship with it ? How can you proportion weight to 
 support if you do not know what the support 
 amounts to ? How are you to aim at a mark that 
 has no existence ? The truth is that proportion in 
 connection with Egyptian columns and entablatures 
 is a word without a meaning. You may increase or 
 decrease the entablature's size indefinitely, but you 
 never will touch the point where it seems to 
 correspond with the columns, for this point it is for 
 i6 
 
THE TEMPLES OF EGYPT 
 the columns themselves to determine, and they have 
 not done so. The obvious conclusion is that the 
 law of proportion — and the same holds good of 
 unity, symmetry, and the like, for they are all 
 interdependent — will not work at all save with those 
 forms which obey the primary rule of expressing 
 function. Proportion, unity, symmetry are archi- 
 tectural principles, and can and will operate only 
 with architectural forms ; but only those forms are 
 architectural which express function. In short, to 
 press the case against Egyptian architecture to its 
 logical conclusion, we shall have to argue, not that 
 that architecture is indifferent or bad architecture, 
 but that it is not architecture at all ; and, indeed, a 
 suspicion of this seems once or twice to have 
 visited Mr. Blomfield himself ; at least we find him, 
 in spite of Greek parallels and the grand manner, 
 declaring that, after all, " in criticising this archi- 
 tecture it is useless to apply the canons of northern 
 art," a phrase which, if it does not mean that 
 architecture in itself has no fixed laws, can only 
 mean, I suppose, that Egyptian buildings are not 
 architecture. 
 
 Now it seems to me that to exalt a style of this 
 stamp to the intellectual level of the Greek standard 
 of art is entirely to misapprehend its true character. 
 In general plan, as in the shape of its individual 
 features, the intellectual note is equally lacking. 
 There is no such thing in Egyptian architecture as 
 proportion, as unity, as the subordination of the 
 parts to the whole, any more than there is any such 
 thing in it as right relation between its component 
 members and the function they perform. Egyptian 
 
 B 17 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 structural features are no more combined intel- 
 lectually than they are conceived intellectually. 
 Such a style has nothing whatever to teach us in 
 the way of art, and we shall certainly only obscure 
 the meaning of the laws of art by endeavouring to 
 trace their presence in works of such a totally 
 different origin. 
 
 But if we shift our point of view — if, instead of 
 asking what Egyptian architecture has to teach 
 us about the fixed laws of art, we inquire what it 
 has to teach us about the life of the Nile valley — it is 
 possible we may arrive at more satisfactory results. 
 To these questions its very defects and limitations 
 are part of its answer, indicating as they do 
 corresponding defects or limitations in the life out 
 of which they proceeded. At the same time, in 
 instituting a comparison between art and life there 
 is no reason to confine our survey of art strictly to 
 architecture. The characteristics we have been 
 noticing of Egyptian architecture hold good of 
 Egyptian art generally. The chief of those charac- 
 teristics, as regards the architecture, and that which 
 contrasts it with all Western style, was, we saw, its 
 non-intellectual nature as indicated by the fact that 
 for thousands of years it remains content with 
 structural forms which are not realised as structural 
 features at all. Now, if we turn to the Egyptian 
 bas-reliefs of which the temple walls are such 
 opulent museums, we shall draw from sculpture the 
 same evidence that we lately obtained from archi- 
 tecture. The reader knows the general character of 
 this temple sculpture too well for me to need to 
 describe it. Its main feature is an iron formalism 
 i8 
 
THE TEMPLES OF EGYPT 
 which usurps the place of intelh'gent observation. 
 The figures and groups of warrior kings and animal- 
 headed gods are composed in obedience to certain 
 fixed and invariable rules, which rules are them- 
 selves a defiance of the laws of nature. No figure 
 is realised in its entirety, but each limb and member 
 of it is separately finished in that aspect which most 
 easily suggests itself to the memory, and the frag- 
 ments are then pieced together to form the entire 
 man. Thus a face is carved in profile, but the eye is 
 the full eye ; the shoulders are turned square to the 
 front, while the legs and feet revert to the exact profile 
 once more. It is inevitable that such an arbitrary 
 and unnatural arrangement should preclude any 
 attempt at reahsm in detail, since the whole must Hve 
 if the parts are to live. Hands, feet, eyes, ears, noses, 
 hair, arms and legs are all carved in Egyptian art, 
 not imitatively, not as by one who realises the 
 meaning and nature of that which he depicts, but in 
 accordance with certain childish precedents early 
 established, and never, at least to any appreciable 
 extent, altered. The work as it stands is often 
 delicate and always precise, the outlines are firmly 
 and exactly drawn, the finish of the surface exhibits 
 considerable manual dexterity, but there is in these 
 figures and faces no mind or thought of any kind. 
 They are mere mechanical reiterations of certain 
 cut-and-dried precepts which demand for their 
 production skill of hand, but no mental co-operation 
 of any sort or kind. 
 
 And yet, just as Mr. Blomfield has invested the 
 Nile temples with aesthetic meaning, or as Mr. 
 Piazzi Smith has divined certain profound scientific 
 
 19 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 
 purposes in the pyramids, so there have been others 
 who have extracted an infinite significance from the 
 blank masks of Egyptian sculpture. Mr. Hichens, 
 and still more M. Loti, have distilled from the Sphinx 
 by moonlight emotions to which I cannot here 
 attempt to do justice. But how much of their 
 emotion is found and how much brought ? Senti- 
 mental and imaginative people will always incline 
 probably to see in the vacancy of the Sphinx's 
 expression a reflex of the vide et neant which lies 
 on the other side of knowledge. But the difference 
 between knowing that there is nothing to know and 
 knowing nothing may easily be lost sight of. There 
 is a vide et neant on this side of knowledge as well 
 as on the other. Has the Sphinx finished thinking, or 
 has it, perhaps, not begun to think ? If the reader 
 will compare the countenance of the Sphinx with the 
 precisely similar and equally vacant countenances 
 carved on the innumerable sarcophagi which have 
 found their way into European museums he will easily 
 answer the question. The emptiness of the Sphinx's 
 face is a prevailing trait in all Egyptian sculpture. 
 All Egyptian faces stare before them with the same 
 blank regard which can be made to mean anything 
 precisely because it means nothing. It is natural 
 that we, with the idea in our heads that sculpture 
 must interpret thought and feeling, should strain 
 our eyes to discover in these passionless lineaments 
 some hidden mystery. But in truth we waste our 
 ingenuity ; for not only are these faces too con- 
 sistently and uniformly blank, and blank in a too 
 stereotyped and monotonous fashion, to be charge- 
 able with any depths or subtleties of thought, but 
 20 
 
THE TEMPLES OF EGYPT 
 also the more we examine Egyptian art the more 
 clearly we perceive that to credit it with the wish to 
 interpret profound ideas and emotions is to credit 
 it with views which in fact it never possessed. Art 
 in Egypt is not used for any such purpose. The 
 Sphinx faces are not emptier of expression than the 
 groups of combatants and chariots on the temple 
 walls are destitute of inherent purpose and passion. 
 Kings, gods, prisoners, the smiting champion and 
 the transfixed victim are all equally expressionless. 
 Clearly the idea that art can be charged with, and 
 visibly body forth, the emotions and ideas of the 
 human mind was never grasped by Egyptian 
 sculptors ; and when battle-scenes are destitute of 
 the most obvious expression of energy and emotion, 
 why should we go out of our way to suppose that a 
 profound significance is to be attributed to equally 
 mechanical reiterations of the human countenance ? 
 The truth is, Egyptian sculpture is a sculpture 
 barren of intellectual insight and intellectual interest. 
 A few years ago Professor Loewy published a very 
 interesting work on archaic art, in which he dwelt 
 on the influence of memory upon drawing. 
 
 '< Not all images of objects [he points out], even 
 of those frequently seen, are equally retained by the 
 memory, which prefers rather to make a selection. 
 We have seen numberless times a leaf, a wheel, an 
 ear, an eye, an outstretched hand, and so on, from 
 their every point of view, but nevertheless so often 
 as we thoughtlessly picture to ourselves a leaf, a 
 wheel, &c., there appears in our mind only one 
 image of each," 
 
 21 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 After explaining that the unpractised memory is 
 limited and embraces only the simplest forms, 
 Professor Loewy adds that "most objects, being 
 more or less complex, leave behind them only an 
 indistinct image of their general appearance.' We 
 then come to a particularly interesting observation : 
 "To make this image clearer, the imagination," 
 Professor Loewy supposes, " proceeds as follows : 
 It brings the component parts one by one into 
 consciousness, and with these familiar elements 
 builds up the image which it cannot picture to 
 itself as a whole," the result being that ** in the 
 mental process the organic whole of the natural 
 object is resolved in a succession of images of its 
 parts, each part independent of the other." That 
 we have here a plausible analysis of the limitations 
 of Egyptian art any one who recalls its unvarying 
 repetition of limbs and features, each dealt with 
 separately in its easiest and most memorable aspect, 
 and afterwards fitted forcibly together to form a 
 whole, will acknowledge. Each feature seized by 
 Egyptian art, the profile face and feet, the full 
 fronting shoulders, is the feature at its simplest, 
 the feature as a child would naturally try to repre- 
 sent it. The further stage of advance, which con- 
 sists in combining the parts into a whole animated 
 by a common purpose and in due relation and 
 harmony with each other, is never attained to. 
 Egyptian art, in short, remains placidly and per- 
 manently fixed in the archaic stage of development. 
 No impulse of curiosity or more intimate insight 
 nto the nature of things ever carries it beyond the 
 boundary. Its simple memory-pictures become, 
 22 
 
THE TEMPLES OF EGYPT 
 by long usage, formed with exquisite deftness, but 
 they grow only the more strictly and hopelessly 
 conventionalised with the lapse of time. 
 
 There have been two great creative movements 
 in the history of Western art, the Greek and the 
 Renaissance movements ; the movement that centred 
 in Athens and the movement that centred in 
 Florence. And in both these cases the mental 
 circumstances and characteristics of the hour, and 
 the nature and general character of the art which 
 resulted, are strictly similar. On the one hand, 
 Athens and Florence live in history as the com- 
 munities which originated or revived the idea of 
 what we may call an intellectual civilisation, that 
 is to say, a civilisation directed and controlled by 
 rational motives. Across a gap of twenty centuries 
 the two states are drawn together by their mutual 
 confidence in the intellectual faculty and their 
 mutual unbounded delight in its free use and 
 exercise. Against the Egyptian background of 
 routine the Greek epoch stands out with the sparkle 
 and animation of sudden life. We know not what 
 those grey figures are that move in the dimness of 
 the Egyptian twilight, but these warm and supple 
 Greek figures we know. Their attitudes and fea- 
 tures, their thoughts and emotions, are ours. We 
 can identify ourselves with them still. We can be 
 thrilled by their art and melted by their poetry ; for 
 in the main their point of view is ours. The intel- 
 lectual estimate of life which they proposed and 
 inaugurated is that which we still hold by. In every 
 department of life and thought, in literature, in 
 art, in science and knowledge of the universe, in 
 
 23 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 government and philosophy, the effects of the 
 new motive, of the determination to place life 
 under control of the rational faculty, are felt and 
 seen. 
 
 And so, too, with what we rightly call the age of 
 ''intellectual awakening" — the ageof the Renaissance. 
 It is a modern age. Against the dark background 
 of mediaeval semi-barbarism it lives and moves with 
 what seems to us a suddenly natural life. We under- 
 stand its motives and its speech, and all its ways are 
 familiar to us. It, too, has accepted the rational 
 estimate. Not to live a life of habit, not to accept 
 explanations passively and blindly submit itself to 
 the laws and forces of nature, but to probe and 
 question, to examine into reasons and explanations, 
 and analyse the composition and the laws of nature, 
 in a word, to assert in all directions the authority 
 of thought, is the ideal once more of human 
 existence. 
 
 These two epochs, then, stand out in history as 
 pre-eminently epochs of intellectual vitality. But 
 they were also pre-eminently epochs of artistic 
 vitality, and their artistic vitality was of one and the 
 same kind. What primarily and above all distin- 
 guishes Attic and Florentine art is their resolve, 
 similar in both cases, to arrive at natural or realistic 
 representation, and their slow struggle towards, 
 and final achievement of that end. Greek intellec- 
 tualism acting on art turns inanimate convention 
 into vital forms : it discovers ease and grace of 
 feature and pose and how tp make the human 
 figure expressive of the thoughts and emotions 
 which inspire human nature. Renaissance intel- 
 
 24 
 
THE TEMPLES OF EGYPT 
 lectualism acting on art achieves precisely the 
 same results : it turns the stiff conventionalism of 
 the old Byzantine forms into animated and living 
 figures, and in all other branches of art it sets itself 
 to the discovery of the scientific methods and 
 laws which result in realistic representation. The 
 consequence is that these two epochs, so remark- 
 able for sudden intellectual initiative, are just as 
 remarkable, in the sphere of art, for a suddenly 
 aroused and forcibly expressed sense of naturalism. 
 So strikingly obvious, indeed, is the combination — 
 working out as it does by equal steps, intellectual 
 development and activity on the one side keeping 
 pace with artistic freedom and realism on the other 
 — that no one can think for a moment of Greek 
 art as the expression of Greek life, and Renais- 
 sance art as the expression of Renaissance life 
 without coming to regard naturalism in art — or 
 the capacity to render things realistically and as 
 we see them — as the counterpart of intellectualism 
 in life. 
 
 The identification of the two, I may add, has a 
 natural appropriateness and inevitability. For 
 when we think of what intellectual vitality means, 
 when we think of intellect's delight in examining 
 and analysing and giving an exact and realistically 
 true account of all it handles and deals with, it is 
 inevitable that we should see in a correctly drawn, 
 modelled, proportioned and foreshortened group 
 or landscape a work conceived with the aid of 
 intellectual perception. 
 
 On the other hand, when we see groups and 
 landscapes misdrawn and presented to us in such 
 
 25 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 attitudes and perspectives as cause them to look 
 altogether misshapen and unreal, it is difficult for 
 us to avoid the conviction that we are dealing with 
 a race which was intellectually defective. For, we 
 think, if intellect which so delights in reality and 
 exactitude of definition were active among this 
 people, it would have taught them how to model, 
 draw, and foreshorten so as to produce the appear- 
 ance of reahty. 
 
 In our own minds, therefore, we feel, what Athens 
 and Florence assure us of, that intellectual vitality 
 and the capacity for real representation in art are 
 inseparably linked together ; the latter being, in 
 fact, the visible sign or expression of the presence 
 of the former. But if this is a true conclusion, 
 what will the application of it to Egyptian art and 
 Egyptian life mean ? Egyptian art is the most v 
 stereotyped, the most unreal and untrue to nature 
 that we know of, and the conclusion would natu- 
 rally follow that Egyptian life was intellectually 
 defective. But this Mr. Blomfield will not allow 
 for a moment. "The Egyptians," he assures us, 
 "were a people of great intelligence and highly 
 developed civilisation." Mr. Blomfield advances 
 nothing in support of this assertion, yet it is a 
 vitally important one. The appeal for each of us 
 is to the people, to what we know of their literature 
 and science and the fragments of their thoughts 
 that have come down to us. It is only by this 
 appeal that our arguments can be satisfactorily 
 verified. Asserting the intellectual character of the 
 art, Mr. Blomfield assumes as a matter of course 
 the intellectual character of the civilisation it sprang 
 26 
 
THE TEMPLES OF EGYPT 
 from. Asserting the non-intellectual character of 
 the art, I on my side must prove, if I can, the 
 non-intellectual character of the civilisation. 
 
 Nor is this quite so difficult a task as it may 
 appear, for if, overcoming the awe we feel for 
 things of great antiquity, we look frankly at any 
 aspect of Egyptian life, it is impossible not to be 
 struck by the archaic quality in it, a quality which 
 we soon learn to connect with a tendency towards 
 irrational or non-intellectual views. Religion is, of 
 course, always the most significant test in matters 
 like these. 1 will not enter into the complicated 
 relationships of the innumerable Egyptian gods 
 and godlets. They are mostly of local origin and 
 influence, but are exposed to competition with each 
 other as the country achieves a more or less con- 
 scious unity. Some die out, some extend their 
 sway, many come to be thought of as additional or 
 alternative names for a more fashionable god whose 
 fame happens to be spreading, many again are 
 described as an attribute or quality of such a god. 
 They combine, unite, separate, dissolve into each 
 other, disappear and reappear with a motion which 
 it is impossible to follow, and to which no definite 
 and progressive purpose can be assigned. Pro- 
 fessor Petrie divides the Egyptian gods into several 
 categories, animal, cosmic, human, and abstract, 
 but the distinctions are hard to maintain, and the 
 most degraded ideas and comparatively elevated 
 ones are constantly intermixed. Of all traits, 
 however, the persistence of animal worship is the 
 most noticeable in the religion of Egypt, the 
 motives, if correctly gauged by Professor Petrie, 
 
 27 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 being the same as usually appeal to man in the 
 animal stage of enlightenment. 
 
 "The baboon was regarded as the emblem of 
 Tahuti, the god of wisdom ; the serious expression 
 and human ways of the large baboon are an 
 obvious cause for their being regarded as the wisest 
 of animals. Tahuti is represented as a baboon 
 from the first dynasty down to late times, and four 
 baboons were sacred in his temple at Hermopolis, 
 These four baboons were often portrayed as adoring 
 the sun ; this idea is due to their habit of chattering 
 at sunrise." 
 
 Moreover, primitive animal worship not only 
 maintained itself but tended to drag down all 
 religious conceptions to its own level. In the Apis 
 bull of Memphis Ptah was said to be incarnate, in 
 the bull of Heliopolis Ra was incarnate, while Baku, 
 the bull of Hermonthis, was the incarnation of 
 Mentu. The cow was identified with Hathor, the 
 ram with Osiris, with Amon, with Khnumu, the 
 creator ; the hippopotamus was the goddess Ta-urt, 
 the jackal was Anubis, the god of departing souls. 
 The hawk was identified with Horus and Ra, the 
 sun-god ; the vulture impersonated Mut, the god- 
 dess of maternity at Thebes ; the crocodile was 
 especially sacred throughout the Fayum, where it 
 was identified with Osiris. It is to be observed that 
 in each case, though a god was supposed to be 
 incarnated in the animal, it was the animal, not the 
 god, that was recognised by the nation ; in other 
 words, it was an animal- worship of the idea of deity 
 which alone was generally appreciated. PVom the 
 28 
 
THE TEMPLES OF EGYPT 
 
 dawn of Egyptian history it would appear that 
 animal-worship in the Nile Valley received state 
 sanction. As far back as the second Thinite 
 Dynasty the worship of the bull Apis at Memphis, 
 Mnevis of Heliopolis, and the ram of Mendes was 
 legalised : 
 
 *'and though [as Professor Sayce points out] the 
 official explanation was that these animals were but 
 incarnations of Ptah and Ra, to whom the worship 
 was really addressed, it was an explanation about 
 which the people neither knew nor cared. The 
 divine honours they paid to the bull and ram were 
 paid to the animals themselves, and not to the gods 
 of the priestly cult." 
 
 This primitive form of belief, which appears to 
 have been indigenous to the country, remained 
 always the essential attribute of its religion. St. 
 Clement of Alexandria describes the sumptuous 
 adornment of the Egyptian temples of his day, the 
 approach to the shrine, the drawing aside of the 
 gold-embroidered curtain and the involuntary laugh 
 of derision which ensued : "for no god is found 
 therein, but a cat, or a crocodile, or a serpent sprung 
 from the soil, or some such brute animal, and the 
 Egyptian deity is revealed as a beast that rolls itself 
 on a purple coverlet." Not man's spiritual instinct 
 only, but his rational nature, as developed under 
 classical training, revolted at such a spectacle. 
 Roman and Greek expressed equal disgust for the 
 beast-worship which flourished with such strange 
 persistence in the valley of the Nile. Minds which 
 had absorbed the idea of a life directed and 
 
 29 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 controlled by the dictates of reason, and which 
 regarded the gods as the incarnation of all things 
 humanly desirable and beautiful, could not but 
 consider the menagerie of the Egyptian Pantheon 
 with as much scorn as astonishment. I am speaking, 
 of course, of the popular and generally accepted 
 views on religion in Egypt rather than of those 
 speculations of the priestly profession which, 
 though they attained to nothing extraordinary in 
 the way of thought, though they were essentially 
 incoherent and often mutually contradictory, yet 
 contained hints of a more adequate and spiritual 
 conception of divine ideas. Applying their own 
 reasoning processes to these scattered hints and 
 guesses, the Greeks were able to employ them as 
 material in a coherent philosophical system. In so 
 doing they were but applying to Egyptian philo- 
 sophy the treatment they had applied to Egyptian 
 art. The intellectual insight which had evolved the 
 Doric column out of the Egyptian lotus, and living 
 figures out of Egyptian bas-reliefs, might wring some- 
 thing intelligible out of the inconsequent guesses of 
 Egyptian theology. But though something might 
 be made of these suggestions by bringing the 
 missing faculty to bear upon them, nothing was 
 ever made out of them in Egypt itself. Not only 
 was the Egyptian religion destitute of any philo- 
 sophical system, but the co-existence of the incon- 
 sistencies it contained points to an absence of 
 ordinary intellectual capacity. It is impossible that 
 beliefs so haphazard and self-contradictory should 
 have subsisted among a people of what we should 
 call average reasoning powers. It is the case, as 
 
 30 
 
THE TEA/IPLES OF EGYPT 
 Professor Sayce observes, that even in highly 
 organised religions we find a combination of hetero- 
 geneous elements. But, in proportion as the races 
 concerned are possessed of mental lucidity and 
 insight, these heterogeneous elements are fused 
 and harmonised into a consistent whole. If the 
 Egyptian made no such endeavour, it was because 
 he lacked the faculty to which disorder is an 
 offence. Of the *' loosely connected agglomeration 
 of beliefs and practices" which made up the 
 Egyptian religion, Professor Sayce points out that 
 
 " no attempt was ever made to form them into a 
 coherent and homogeneous whole, or to find a 
 philosophic basis upon which they might all rest. 
 Such an idea, indeed, never occurred to the 
 Egyptian. He was quite content to take his 
 religion as it had been handed down to him, or as 
 it was prescribed by the State ; he had none of that 
 inner retrospection which distinguishes the Hindu, 
 none of that desire to know the causes of things 
 which characterised the Greek. The contradictions 
 which w^e find in the articles of his creed never 
 troubled him ; he never perceived them, or if he did 
 they were ignored," 
 
 And this, be it noted, is the case with Egyptian 
 religion even among the so-called learned classes. 
 Even among these, religion was totally lacking in the 
 principle of unity, symmetry and harmony ; prin- 
 ciples recognisably intellectual, since they are the 
 outcome of consistent and coherent thought. It is 
 impossible to turn over the jumble of odds and ends 
 that make up Egyptian theology without perceiving 
 
 31 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 that what is lacking to them is the intellect's capacity 
 for distinguishing, selecting, fitting like to like and 
 evolving an order and a harmony out of the existing 
 chaos. But the main body of Egyptian religion 
 never even reached to the level where the applica- 
 tion of intellectual thought was possible. The idea 
 usually accepted is that the beast-worship of the 
 Nile Valley was the product of the aboriginal popu- 
 lation, while the more advanced conceptions of 
 anthropomorphic or abstract deities wxre importa- 
 tions, most probably from Assyria or Arabia. Be 
 this as it may, the fact remains that a form of belief 
 peculiar to the primitive stage of human development 
 remained dominant in Egyptian religion down to 
 the period of^its total extinction. Persisting with 
 the terrible tenacity so characteristic of all Nilotic 
 ideas and institutions, it would no more let go of 
 life than the similar primitive limitations would let 
 go of art. We see in both a perpetuation of the 
 archaic phase, a perpetuation which depends on 
 one and the same startling deficiency in Egyptian 
 character, its incapacity for intellectual development. 
 There are religions of three kinds, animal, rational, 
 and spiritual, and it has belonged to man's progress 
 to embrace each in turn. It is not only, nor so much 
 even, the spiritual consciousness in us which rejects 
 the idea of w^orshipping crocodiles and jackals as the 
 intellectual consciousness. The especial note of 
 degradation of such an act, of less than manhood, 
 is due to its lack of reason. Why have we no such 
 feeling of repulsion when we study classical myths 
 and beliefs ? Because, though these may appear 
 spiritually inadequate, they teach or sanction a 
 
 32 
 
THE TEMPLES OF EGYPT 
 human ideal approved by intellect, and they are not 
 therefore humanly degrading. From the human 
 point of view at least, Apollo is no mean figure ; 
 but from the human or divine point of view jackal- 
 headed Anubis falls short of the requisite standard 
 by all the difference which separates beast and man, 
 and that difference consists in the beast's lack of 
 intellect. 
 
 If we had space to glance at the learning, litera- \ 
 ture, education, and government of ancient Egypt 
 we should find in each the same attribute wanting 
 that was wanting to religion. Egyptian learning 
 has nothing whatever in common, as Herr Erman 
 long ago pointed out, with " the pure pleasure which 
 we of the modern world feel at the recognition of 
 truth." Its object is not to divine the meaning of 
 phenomena, not to follow thought disinterestedly 
 and assimilate ideas for their own sake, but simply 
 to obtain for its professors access to official employ- 
 ment. Scholarship in Egypt was the passport from 
 a life of toil and drudgery to the official life of the 
 overseer and exciseman. As scholarship, however, 
 it is the most sterile example of its kind I have ever 
 met with. It consists largely of wearisome " elucida- 
 tions" of ancient prayers and hymns, and is marked 
 by nothing but a perfectly barren talent for inventing 
 hidden meanings where none exist, and adding to 
 the difficulties of the text by supplying a number of 
 explanations which leave the subject ten times more 
 perplexed than they found it. The Egyptian unin- 
 telligibility is due, not to depth of thought, but to 
 verbal quibbles and superficial irrelevancies. Evi- 
 dently the scribes, desirous of impressing the ingorant 
 
 c 33 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 multitude by the exhibition of superior wisdom, had 
 made the discovery that the simplest way of doing 
 so lay in the cultivation of verbal obscurities. It is 
 an art which can only deceive the unthinking, and 
 any one who has a feeling for genuine mental 
 initiative will be conscious of the lack of it in these 
 displays of pompous and aimless ingenuity. 
 
 " If," observes Herr Erman, as he concludes his 
 survey of the Egyptian commentators, "the Egyptian 
 contributions to learning were of such little value on 
 a subject which appeared to them of such great 
 importance, it is natural to suppose that on subjects 
 of wider scope they have not rendered much service 
 to science." History, the branch of literature which 
 traces the sequence of events and depicts men as 
 they were and things as they happened, is in a par- 
 ticular degree the intellectual department of litera- 
 ture. In Egypt it is practically non-existent. Some 
 fantastical and extravagant rhapsodies on the vic- 
 tories of kings and other similar events have come 
 down to us, but nothing deserving the name of 
 history. Nor is this, we may feel pretty confident, 
 due to destructive causes. The historical language, 
 of which the style is formed by contact with reality, 
 is unknown in Egyptian literature. Similarly it will 
 be found that, while all the merit of Egyptian poetry 
 is monopolised by the slight and, as they must have 
 seemed in the eyes of the Egyptians themselves, 
 fugitive forms of verse dealing with popular topics 
 and incidents of daily life, the more considerable 
 efforts which require the aid of intellect to support 
 them are destitute of any traces of vitality. Some 
 of the songs addressed to the Nile and to the flowers 
 
 34 
 
THE TEMPLES OF EGYPT 
 and fruits which were its gifts are, as Herr Erman 
 says, "pleasant enough in the barren desert of 
 Egyptian Hterature, where most of the vegetation 
 dries up even as it buds." But, if we turn from what 
 is produced spontaneously and from direct observa- 
 tion to those epic narratives which derive support 
 from intellectual thought and study, there is a com- 
 plete breakdown. The odes describing the great 
 deeds of conquering kings, though holding the first 
 place in public estimation, are insufferably dull and 
 wearisome, consisting as they do of eulogies and 
 compliments so gross and extravagant, yet so hack- 
 neyed by use, that the monotonously reiterated 
 sentences almost cease to convey any meaning 
 whatever. 
 
 The reader will have no difficulty in amassing A 
 further evidence. Let him bear the main outline 
 of the argument in mind. We find, clinging to 
 Egyptian art throughout its long history, qualities 
 which the history of art itself teaches us to be 
 incompatible with intellectual initiative, qualities 
 which it is the especial function of intellectual 
 initiative to dissipate. From this we argue a corre- 
 sponding deficiency in Egyptian life. Egyptian life, 
 we say, like the art which mirrored it, will exhibit 
 progress up to a certain point. All that long experi- 
 ence under unvarying conditions can teach it, it will 
 know. The reiteration of identical practices for 
 hundreds of generations must conduce to a certain 
 accuracy, precision and finish. This we find in the 
 art, for it is the peculiarity of that art that, abiding 
 in the archaic, it perfects it, so that the rudeness we 
 usually associate with this phase of art is replaced 
 
 35 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 
 by smoothness and finish. This, therefore, we expect 
 to find in Hfe, and we do find it. In all the opera- 
 tions, expedients and employments of Egyptian 
 life, the perfection of the primitive is the common 
 attribute. But what if we look beyond this rule-of- 
 thumb procedure for any indication of a real love of 
 thinking ? Does not life stop short where art stops 
 short ? We have glanced at religion. Its pre- 
 dominating characteristic is the tenacity with which 
 it cleaves to what is primitive and its inability 
 to rise to the height of an intellectual ideal. We 
 have glanced at literature. Its primitively simple 
 examples have a kind of merit, but its attempts at 
 any work requiring intellectual aid excite nothing 
 but pity. 
 
 On these grounds let the reader continue to 
 investigate. Let him glance, for example, at mathe- 
 matics. 
 
 ^* Their knowledge of the science at this time [at 
 the time of the Hyksos invasion, that is] was not 
 very great, and we doubt whether they carried their 
 studies much further even under the new Empire, 
 for more than a century and a half later we find in 
 the agricultural lists of the temple of Edfou the 
 same primitive ideas of geometry which are con- 
 tained in our old book. Mathematics, as medicine, 
 seems to have remained stationary at the same stage 
 that it had reached under the old Empire." 
 
 Here once more we have it — the perpetuation of the 
 primitive. How certain eatables were to be divided 
 as payments of wages ; how in the exchange of bread 
 for beer the respective value was to be determined 
 
 36 
 
THE TEMPLES OF EGYPT 
 
 when converted into a quantity of corn, and so 
 on. Such are the limits of arithmetic among the 
 Egyptians. The conclusion is that "there is little 
 to be said for their theoretic knowledge of this 
 science, but their practical knowledge sufficed very 
 well for the simple requirements of daily life." The 
 science, in short, stopped at the archaic stage and 
 never reached the intellectual stage. So again with 
 medicine and surgery ; the same rudimentary know- 
 ledge, the same ignorance of theory prevail from 
 the beginning. Thought never enters into the 
 subject ; its place is taken by that influence which 
 is itself the strongest proof of intellectual inactivity, 
 and which soaks and penetrates Egyptian life in all 
 directions, the influence of witchcraft and magic. 
 Apart from the irrational and revolting usages 
 prescribed by witchcraft and magic, Egyptian 
 medicine and surgery remain fixed and content in 
 the little groove of knowledge worn, as it were, by 
 daily experience. So once more, with all the pro- 
 cesses and instruments of agriculture on which the 
 li^ of the country depended, a perfected routine is 
 the hall-mark of all of them. They are very simple 
 and, as far as they go, very effective, but they imply 
 not a jot of that power of independent thought 
 which, in so many ingenious and wonderful ways, 
 can add the power and speed of mechanism to 
 man's unaided way of doing things. Egyptian 
 pumps and ploughs never vary from the dawn of 
 history. They indicate, in common with all other 
 agricultural usages, an inherited instinct, such as 
 animals in large measure possess also, for perfecting 
 the obvious by endless reiteration, but with one 
 
 37 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 accord, as at a word of command, they stop short 
 at the point where intellect and thought advance to 
 the aid of routine. 
 
 It will be seen, then, that the grasp in which 
 Egyptian art is held — the iron grasp of an imme-^ 
 morial usage — is a grasp which also controls Egyptian 
 life in all its activities. It is a strange and weird 
 spectacle, this spectacle of a perpetualised childhood, 
 of the primitive, pot-hook stage, not developing but 
 everlastingly repeating itself. It demands, if we 
 would understand it, an effort of comprehension 
 on our part which it is extremely difficult for us to 
 make. How can we realise and put ourselves in 
 the place of such a race amid such surroundings ? 
 It is here that art comes to our aid. As I began by 
 saying, apart altogether from its aesthetic value or 
 non-value, art has its human interest, the interest 
 attaching to it as an expression of life and character. 
 Addressed, as it is, directly to sight, it is more con- 
 vincing than any other evidence. So striking, so 
 living, is the image it offers us of racial character 
 that, having once accepted it in this sense, we are 
 drawn out of ourselves in our realisation of its 
 significance and feel ourselves groping towards a 
 true understanding of a race of different mental 
 gifts to ours. Only accept it in this sense, as a 
 mirror of life, we must if we wish for such results. 
 
 Here, then, let the reader take his choice. He 
 has two courses open to him. He may, if he\ 
 chooses, acclaim Egyptian art for its aesthetic 
 attainments. He may persuade himself that he 
 finds in the sausage-shaped columns and squat 
 entablatures of its temples, and in the impossible 
 
 38 
 
THE TEMPLES OF EGYPT 
 conventions that do duty for human figures, all 
 the lofty and noble ideas which are bodied forth 
 in Greek architecture and sculpture. He may 
 celebrate the great principles of harmony, unity, 
 symmetry, so difficult to attain to, and which 
 are, as it were, the very fruit of intellect and its 
 gifts to art, which, he will tell us, he detects in the 
 forms and proportions of Egyptian columns. But 
 having begun thus he will have to keep it up. Art 
 is a standard of life and will insist in applying 
 itself. Whatever interpretation he gives it he will 
 be forced into expecting the equivalent from life. 
 ■ Inevitably, if he starts by talking about the harmony 
 and unity of Egyptian architecture, he will be led 
 on into applauding the intellectual achievements 
 and exalted civilisation of a race which worshipped 
 monkeys and snakes and never got beyond two in 
 the multiplication table. Inevitably his aesthetic 
 estimate will pledge him to the assertion that 
 Egyptian civilisation was equal in intellectual 
 elements to the civilisation of the Greeks. But 
 can any one in his senses, any one who takes the 
 trouble to inform himself what Egyptian civilisation 
 contained and did not contain, acquiesce in that ? 
 Where are the great Egyptian poets, historians, 
 philosophers, whom we are to place on a level with 
 Sophocles, Thucydides, Plato ? Is it not palpable 
 that the level attained by Greek art was the level 
 attained by Greek life as a whole ? In what single 
 particular does Egyptian life approach that level ? 
 Thus caught between two false estimates, one 
 expedient only, the last and deadliest of all, lies 
 open to him. He must relax the meaning of his 
 
 39 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 words. An enlightened civilisation must mean 
 whatever Egyptian life will let it mean, and the 
 principles of art whatever Egyptian art will let them 
 mean. In this way the mischief will be transferred 
 from things to standards, and his idea of what 
 constitutes civilisation and what constitutes art will 
 be alike permanently vitiated. 
 
 Or he may take the alternative course. Refusing 
 to be intimidated by the mere duration of Egyptian 
 history and the mere bulk of Egyptian monuments ; 
 remembering that, after all, time is only of value 
 for the things done in it, and bulk only of value for 
 the thought poured into it, he may set himself to 
 judge Egyptian art by those principles which have 
 made art the interpreter of the best that is in human 
 nature. If under such a scrutiny the art of Egypt 
 collapses, if he finds that that art stops short always 
 at the point where intellect should animate and 
 inspire it, he will indeed surrender the idea of 
 deriving any aesthetic instruction or delight from it, 
 and he will give up talking of the principles of art 
 in connection with it. But its value will be far 
 from lost. Now that he has gauged its character 
 rightly, Egyptian art has become a touchstone with 
 which to test the civilisation out of which it sprang. 
 He proceeds to apply it to life, and immediately he 
 does this he finds that his estimate of art turns of 
 its own accord into a reliable estimate of life. What 
 is it, he will ask himself, that limits Egyptian ' 
 civilisation, that heads it off and checks it at every 
 turn ? The whole of that civilisation is held from 
 first to last in the bondage of a strict routine. It | 
 deals only with what is obvious. Its expedients are 
 
 4^ 
 
THE TEMPLES OF EGYPT 
 
 the expedients of primitive man perfected by endless 
 repetition. In every department of life the advance 
 up to the limits of the obvious is sure ; but in every 
 department the halt at these limits is sure too. 
 Whence, then, this limitation ? It is that in every 
 line of progress — religion, science, literature, agri- 
 culture, what you will — at the stage where the help 
 of intellect should be forthcoming, that help is 
 withheld. 
 
 Faithful as a mirror, Egyptian art reflects the life 
 that bore it. The mental stagnation is there, and 
 there, too, is the narrow proficiency of perpetual 
 iteration. Is it so easy for us to reconstruct in our 
 imagination the picture of life in the Nile valley 
 in those old ages that we should slight such a clue 
 as this ? To reason, to think, to argue is a slow 
 and doubtful process. To see, to contemplate in its 
 visible proportions and limitations the thought that 
 inspired an ancient civilisation is to attain to an 
 intimacy of understanding open to us by no other 
 means. 
 
 41 
 
CHAPTER II 
 THE TYRANNY OF THE NILE 
 
 The river's part in Egypt : The art and civilisation of Egypt 
 cast in the same mould as the country : Dependence of Egypt 
 on the Nile : Character of that dependence : Nile fertiHsation 
 and Nile rule : All occupations, all hopes and fears dominated 
 by the Nile : The labours of the Egyptians regulated by its 
 movements from month to month : It turns life into the 
 repetition of a perpetual formula : Compare the rival river- 
 civilisation of Assyria : The similarity in circumstances and 
 routine of life : Similarity also in art : Limitations of Assyrian 
 and Egyptian art identical : Each stops at the point where 
 intellect should exert its informing power : It is so, too, in life 
 and character : The influences which dominate Egypt focussed 
 in her temples 
 
 IN the last chapter I endeavoured to show that the 
 Hmitations apparent in the art of Egypt were 
 limitations also in the life and thought of Egypt. 
 Egyptian art is archaic in conception, but at the 
 same time it is perfect in execution. The combina- 
 tion is unusual. Rudeness of execution and rude- 
 ness of conception generally go together, for people 
 who get beyond the rudimentary stage in 
 execution — who attain, that is, to delicacy and 
 refinement of execution — have, as a rule, got 
 beyond the rudimentary stage in conception also. 
 By the time they have attained perfect manual skill 
 and dexterity they have attained also to some 
 knowledge in the art of representation. So, when 
 we are confronted with a group obviously archaic in 
 conception, made up of childishly impossible figures, 
 42 
 
THE TYRANNY OF THE NILE 
 attitudes and features, we instinctively look for and 
 expect a corresponding deficiency in the executive 
 department. But although in the matter of concep- 
 tion Egyptian art remains fixed and immovable in 
 the archaic stage, there is nothing archaic in its 
 actual execution. This is perfect. It is not the 
 hand that is out. The practice of centuries in doing 
 the same thing over and over again has trained this 
 to complete ductility. It is the mind, the guiding 
 intelligence, which should lead the way, and which 
 among all progressive races does lead the way out 
 of the archaic stage of development, which is at 
 fault. This refuses to lead, and so, for Egyptian art, 
 no advance is possible. From this strange com- 
 bination of intellectual apathy with consummate 
 craftsmanship there ensues the changelessness we 
 know of. Unled by thought, Egyptian art can 
 never escape the archaic rut. It is unable to 
 develop, but on the other hand it is not subject to 
 decay, for it cannot attain the phase of ripeness 
 which makes decay a natural process. Perfect yet 
 primitive, young yet very old, its hoary infancy 
 defies time. It is the image of routine, of the deadly 
 monotony of an unthinking iteration. 
 
 But having got thus far it is difficult to stop. It 
 is difficult to realise the curt and definite character 
 of these limitations of Egyptian art and life without 
 being led to wonder at and inquire into their possible 
 cause. Why did the Egyptian mind move for ever 
 in the same narrow round ? Why did it never for 
 a moment shake off the ancient tyranny of custom 
 and routine which kept it pinned to the archaic ? 
 Such questions must occur to all of us who give our 
 
 43 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 
 attention to the subject, but they will occur with 
 particular force to those of us who have studied 
 Egyptian art and history in Egypt itself. For those 
 who have so studied have had an opportunity of 
 noticing a similarity not easily ignored. They have 
 examined the figures of Egyptian sculpture petrified 
 for ever in attitudes of naive and childish simplicity, 
 and then, looking round them, they have seen the 
 same strange simplicity echoed by Nature herself 
 and governing the very construction of the country. 
 Running all through the compositions of Egyptian 
 art they have noticed the authority of a perpetual 
 routine. Running through the land of Egypt 
 before their very eyes is a power which, ever since 
 the country was created, has held in a similar 
 routine the lives of its inhabitants. The art and 
 civilisation of Egypt seem cast in the same mould as 
 the country itself. It may be possible to exaggerate 
 the significance of such a similarity; it may be 
 difficult exactly to define its meaning and influence ; 
 but that it exists, that it has significance and that it 
 is worth some thought and attention, I think no one 
 will deny. 
 
 There is in Egypt, studded along the river banks, 
 a kind of pump, called the "shayduf," which is 
 entirely in keeping in its simplicity with Egyptian 
 traditions, for it consists merely of a tall, tapering 
 pole working on a pivot and with a bucket dangling 
 by a long rope from the tip of it. Unseen in the 
 shadow of the bank the peasant hauls upon the 
 rope till the lofty pole is bent low over the river 
 and the bucket is plunged into its current, when, 
 releasing his hold, the point soars up of its own 
 
 44 
 
THE TYRANNY OF THE NILE 
 accord, lifting the full bucket to the top of the 
 bank. As the simple mechanism works and the 
 tall points rhythmically prostrate and erect them- 
 selves, they emit a thin, whining note, the genuine 
 whine of Oriental supplication which runs all 
 through the East ; and this bowing and whining 
 are, to the traveller on the river, a perpetual ac- 
 companiment. Long before the last tall point has 
 disappeared in the distance, the next, with its 
 perpetual bowing motion, heaves in sight, and long 
 before the last plaintive cry dies into silence the 
 note is taken up and repeated. And so the sacred 
 chorus and the low salaaming are carried on, while 
 to that motion and refrain the precious water is 
 ladled out to the thirsty crops. 
 
 But these shaydufs are more than a curious 
 feature of Nile scenery. They may be said to utter, 
 adequately enough, a sentiment in which the whole 
 country is steeped. Their adoring motion is latent 
 in every plant and tree, and, in their song of 
 supplication, 
 
 " They join their vocal worship to the choir 
 Of creatures wanting voice." 
 
 The sentiment thus expressed is the sentiment 
 which a stranger in the country, if he is not always 
 to remain a stranger, has need to understand. 
 It is so easy to call a thing by a name and 
 dismiss it, to state a fact and imagine we have 
 extracted its contents ! Egypt, said Herodotus, is 
 '* the gift of the river." That hits it, and that seems 
 sufficient. Certainly the fact is obvious enough. 
 Egyptian geography was made for children. Its 
 
 45 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 distinct arrangement, amid the jumble of the earth's 
 surface, attracts instinctive attention. All are aware 
 of the winding valley, so narrow yet so green and 
 succulent, a mere ribbon of verdure, with the tall 
 mountain chains flanking it to left and right, and 
 beyond these the endless expanse of yellow desert. 
 All are aware that this strip of fertility is of the 
 Nile's creating, that the great turbid river has 
 brought each ounce of the thirty-foot-deep black 
 soil which constitutes Egypt from mountain sides 
 and summits far distant to deposit it here in its 
 place. Every one is aware, too, that the Nile 
 watches solicitously over its offspring, and in its 
 annual inundations fertilises and refreshes the land 
 of its creation. What have we to add to such a 
 summary ? Is there any mystery to explain ? Are 
 any of the facts difficult to understand ? Have we left 
 anything out of account ? No, there is no mystery 
 and nothing to add. The Nile is Egypt's sole 
 architect. It was the Nile, unassisted, which laid 
 deep and dark the foundations of the old Egyptian 
 civilisation. The circumstances, indeed, seem all to 
 have been arranged and thought out as if to test the 
 river's capacity. The necessary material was placed 
 at its disposal, the necessary area marked off for its 
 action. All risk of interference was strictly provided 
 against, and rain, snow, frost, thaw, volcanic erup- 
 tions, streams and torrents — all the natural agents 
 and elemental powers which spread, distribute, crack 
 up and intermix the ingredients of continents — were 
 rigorously excluded and fenced off from the narrow 
 domain consecrated to the river's experiment. 
 That the result of such a construction should be 
 
 46 
 
THE TYRANNY OF THE NILE 
 of striking, almost ludicrous simplicity, that it can be 
 grasped, as a fact, by any one who gives a moment's 
 attention to the matter, and that it is, as a fact, 
 covered and explained by our old formula, the " gift 
 of the river," we admit. But there is all the difference 
 in the world between stating the Nile's action as a 
 fact and realising it in its influence and consequences. 
 The most obvious facts are precisely those which in 
 their consequences are most important. It is the 
 subtle and the complex that are easily exhausted. 
 In the simplicity of the Nile valley lies its claim to 
 our patient attention. 
 
 Let me then urge the reader, who, because 
 Egyptian geography is as plain as a pikestaff, would 
 dismiss it from his mind, to dwell on it a moment 
 longer. It is because it is as plain as a pikestaff 
 that it is worth dwelling on, for it is because it is 
 plain that it is powerful. What he sees at a glance 
 others have seen at a glance too. The millions 
 who have lived in this valley, whose civilisation, as 
 we say, was the oldest on the globe, and the vestiges 
 of whose immense architecture still attract our 
 wonder and curiosity, they saw it at a glance. The 
 dominion of the Nile over Egypt was a fact which 
 stared each one of them in the face. Every unit in 
 those teeming millions lived out his whole life under 
 the shadow of that great fact. Not only did he 
 himself never escape the consciousness of the Nile's 
 supremacy, but he had probably no notion that it 
 ever could by any possibility be escaped. The life 
 of the Nile valley was extraordinarily self-contained. 
 The desert precluded all communication east and 
 west, and, though the junction of the river with the 
 
 47 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 
 sea might hold out an invitation to foreign enter- 
 prise, the invitation was neglected. The Egyptians 
 were no mariners. Their attention was concen- 
 trated in their valley, and its bounds became the 
 natural confines of their thought. Generation after 
 generation might pass and no whisper from the 
 outer world, no hint that existence was possible 
 save on the bounty of the river need ever reach 
 the dwellers by the Nile. The reader who considers 
 the obvious and easily dismissed fact of the Nile's 
 function in Egypt in this sense, who considers it, 
 that is to say, in its relation to the Egyptian people 
 and to Egyptian history, will see that the more 
 attentively he so considers it the deeper is the 
 significance it acquires. To understand in some 
 slight degree the old race of temple and pyramid 
 builders, to attain to their point of view, and, if it 
 were possible, to see life for a moment as they saw 
 it, must be the wish at times of every traveller in 
 Egypt. May it not be that one way of achieving 
 that end may be to lay aside for a little while the 
 studies and researches of Egyptology and submit 
 ourselves to the conditions and influences which 
 made the Egyptians what they were ? After all, the 
 Nile is the greatest Egyptologist of all. It alone is 
 master of its subject. Suppose we sit down on its 
 bank by the side of the shaydufs and consider for a 
 moment its methods and ideas. 
 
 Just opposite to us, in a bend of the river, showing 
 plainly on the pale pebbly background, are traced a 
 few level streaks of black earth, much like the dark 
 level streaks of one of De Wint's water-colours. 
 These were laid down during the last inundation. 
 
 48 
 
THE TYRANNY OF THE NILE 
 A hundred yards lower down, where the current is 
 slacker, is another little deposit, more solid, and 
 crops are sprouting already in the dark earth. Such 
 signs as these along the Nile banks are frequent, 
 and in some places where the river, repenting its 
 generosity, threatens to wash away the soil it has 
 deposited, rough stone jetties are thrust out from 
 the bank in the hope of protecting it. Rude as they 
 are, considerable toil must have gone to their con- 
 struction, nor do they shield more than a few yards 
 of shore, and that precariously. But the prize is 
 worth the pains. There is no soil in the world to 
 compare with the black Nile mud. It tends, indeed, 
 rather to quantity than quality of produce, but 
 how imposing, and in its way grandiose, is the mere 
 affluence and bulk of the threefold crops with 
 which it is perennially loaded. Whatever one may 
 have seen in the way of fertility — to the writer 
 recurs by way of samples the memory of the vine- 
 yards of Algeria, the rice-fields of the Ceylon low 
 country, the Constantia fruit gardens under Table 
 Mountain, the rich, small, concentrated Sahara 
 oases — still there must always remain something 
 unique in Egypt's brimming cornucopia-like abun- 
 dance. Here, where germination and growth are so 
 rapid, and harvests succeed each other so quickly. 
 Nature seems always giving. Not by long processes 
 of reclaiming and improving has she to be wrought 
 up to the pitch of one doubtful harvest in the year. 
 She is in the bounteous mood. There are no diffi- 
 culties or delays. The rich, moist mould and the 
 hot sun act like a sort of magic. The husbandman 
 sows his seed and runs home to whet his scythe. 
 
 D 49 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 
 Egypt's lap is always full. Her fat acres are 
 burdened, almost uninterruptedly, with harvests 
 more succulent and of a freer, larger growth than 
 the harvests of other climates. 
 
 Does the reader remember the country about 
 Asiut or in the neighbourhood of Luxor ? Does he 
 remember the wheat, how tall and solid it grew, 
 how dark and rich the gold wave of its level surface, 
 how beautifully, by contrast, the little tufted islands 
 of dark green palms stood up in it ? And the tall 
 brakes of sugar-cane where the harvesting was going 
 on, each great stalk, ringed like bamboos, rising 
 nine or ten feet high, making a glowing impene- 
 trable thicket, their long narrow leaves, light green 
 or baked to yellow by the sun, and the lower ones, 
 white and dry and long since dead, hanging about 
 the stems thickening the rich jungle. Men and 
 children, bronzed to copper-colour, worked among 
 the golden canes, and camels squatted on their 
 haunches browsing and waiting for their loads. 
 The power of sun and soil shone in the picture, in 
 the sugar-stored canes, in the tawny, yellow foliage, 
 in the Arabs' smooth limbs and blackened faces. 
 Here was something more than immediate and 
 visible plenty. Here in the glowing light, the rich 
 mould, the ample vegetation, was the habit of ripe- 
 ness, the signs of nothing hardening and annealing 
 in Nature, but of lavish abundance and almost 
 effortless increase. 
 
 Such scenes have an influence of their own, 
 and human nature still responds to their appeal. 
 Divorced as it is from religious sanction and dis- 
 owned by the spiritual faculty, we can still per- 
 
 50 
 
THE TYRANNY OF THE NILE 
 
 ceive what there must have been comforting and 
 sustaining in the old pagan love of Nature and 
 blind, childlike trust in her generosity. Not lacking 
 in certain healthy consequences was man's identifi- 
 cation of his own instincts with the natural processes 
 around him, and the sanction he found in Nature 
 for impulses which since those days have undergone 
 the severest discipline. The very rankness of those 
 early faiths, a rankness as the reader will find who 
 turns over the pages of M. Palanque's book on Nile 
 work, peculiarly characteristic of Egypt, disguises a 
 certain insight and truth. Nature's scheme embraces 
 man. Our tissues share with the tissues of plant 
 and tree. Here in the jungle of rich vegetation, 
 lying on the hot, dark earth, with the sensation of 
 increase and fruition rife in all we see, impregnating 
 the atmosphere, inspiring every branch and leaf and 
 flexible tall stem with an almost conscious vitality, 
 here where Nature is so strong and the call to 
 human flesh of encircling earth so eloquent, it is 
 easy to appreciate the alluring power of the old 
 natural forms of faith. Man has always taken 
 refuge in Nature before he learnt to take refuge in 
 God. But the upward step from Nature to God, 
 does it not imply a certain dissatisfaction with 
 Nature, a realisation of the inadequacy of her 
 philosophy ? It must have been difficult for any 
 such dissatisfaction, any such feeling of inadequacy, 
 to originate amid these scenes of abundance. It 
 must have been very difficult to escape the embrace 
 of Nature when that embrace was as warm and 
 close and comforting as it is here. 
 
 Bearing in mind, then, the capacity and effects of 
 
 SI 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 the sediment with which the Nile is freighted, it is 
 small wonder that those who live along its banks 
 should be on the look-out for a share in it, and be 
 quick to grab and guard it as soon as it comes within 
 reach. Nevertheless, the thought I had in my mind 
 when I drew the reader's attention to the light streaks 
 of earth along the opposite shore was less of that 
 earth's value and preciousness than of the Nile as a 
 power, still in this day active, still carrying on the 
 old work in the old way. This is a point which 
 those who are strangers to the country or who only 
 visit it cursorily are apt to overlook, yet which is 
 bound to influence most strongly those who dwell 
 in the river's presence and profit by its bounty. 
 To the dwellers in the Nile valley the Nile is less 
 the architect of their country than the fertiliser 
 of this year's crops. They do not think of Egypt 
 as the gift of the Nile : they think of these onions 
 or these grapes as the gift of the Nile. They realise 
 the river as a force actively exerting its energy at 
 the present moment. No doubt the periodical exer- 
 tions of the inundation is the event which most 
 vividly illustrates this present energy; indeed, it would 
 be difficult to imagine a phenomenon more striking 
 and extraordinary, whether it be considered in its 
 practical effects or as a kind of spectacular display. 
 Totally at variance with all our notions of floods 
 and their disastrous consequences, the Nile over- 
 flows its banks only to bless and fertilise. The 
 river is never quiescent and at rest. It is always 
 either preparing for or recovering from its periodical 
 exertions. During the later summer months it begins 
 to feel the effects of the spring rains among the 
 5^ 
 
THE TYRANNY OF THE NILE 
 
 Abyssinian uplands, and its current, swelling by 
 degrees, is charged with dark red sediment. By 
 October it attains its maximum, and rising above 
 its containing banks, which are raised by deposits 
 of the heavier sediment rather above the inland, 
 it inundates the low-lying plains, replenishing the 
 dried canals and leaving behind it on its retirement 
 the precious cargo it was charged with in the shape 
 of a thin coating of glossy mud spread over the 
 surface of the land. Then, its task performed, it 
 gradually recedes, and its current grows slowly 
 clearer and shallower and weaker until the time 
 comes when the old impulse from afar once more 
 admonishes it to another effort. 
 
 Thus in year-long respirations the river's body 
 expands and contracts, while up and down the 
 country a busy peasantry utilises and exhausts the 
 last donation and eagerly expect the next. What 
 stranger can sympathise with or fully comprehend 
 so strict a dependence on the river's bounty ? The 
 Nile is the only active and visible factor in Egypt's 
 prosperity, the only factor that seems endowed 
 with intelligence and initiative. Changes of weather 
 vary only from a little hotter to a little less hot. 
 The husbandman can trust securely in the long 
 succession of blue, unclouded days. The conditions 
 of his labour are fixed and steadfast. Only the 
 Nile, in its coming and going, varies sufficiently to 
 concentrate attention and anxiety on its movements. 
 Two or three feet more or less in the normal rise of 
 the river means dams burst and irrigation works 
 destroyed, or great tracts of land left dry and unfer- 
 tilised. Hence the villagers and peasantry of the 
 
 53 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 valley never pray for a good harvest but for a 
 "good Nile." Granted this, the harvest follows 
 with mechanical infallibility. There is no anxiety 
 on that score. It is on the operations of the river 
 that all eyes are fixed, and round which the hopes 
 and fears, the expectations and anxieties of the 
 Egyptian people circulate. 
 
 I know not how to convey a sense of the contrast 
 always in view of the traveller on the Nile, between 
 the luxuriant vegetation of the valley and the hard 
 mineral-white sterility of the limestone ranges 
 which enclose it. The breadth of the fertile tract 
 varies in places considerably. Sometimes the 
 mountains stand well back from the river's course, 
 framing in their tall bare walls, which, with well- 
 marked tiers of strata, often have the look of 
 amphitheatres of regular masonry, ample plains 
 of verdure and palm groves, and small clustering 
 villages. Sometimes the great bluffs project toward 
 the current as if they would threaten to bar its 
 course, and slanting cataracts of rock and stone 
 shelve down almost to the river's brink. But the 
 aspect of the hills themselves never varies in its 
 dazzling and lifeless brilliance. They have their 
 own beauty. When the flush of sunrise or sunset 
 resting upon them warms their cold hue to a rosy 
 pink, and in the pure air the blue shadows of their 
 defiles are inlaid with the exactitude of fragments 
 of lapis lazuli set in an old ivory carving, or when 
 the icy moonlight, which turns night in Egypt into 
 a colourless day, lends them the wan and spectral 
 aspect peculiar to that hour, — then, at such times, 
 they gleam with a weird, uncanny loveliness which 
 
 S4 
 
THE TYRANNY OF THE NILE 
 
 often rivets the eye on them with a kind of wonder. 
 But still the loveliness is one that seems altogether 
 removed from human life and sympathy, and from 
 the human lot. It is a deathlike beauty, signifi( ant, 
 in a way, of the part played by those mountains in 
 Egyptian history. For all through that history the 
 rule that the valley was for the living, the hill for 
 the dead, held good. Here among these white 
 precipices and defiles are the cities and habitations 
 of the departed, who dwell here much as they dwelt 
 in life, in greater or less state ; princes in noble 
 halls, all carved and painted with their deeds of 
 prowess, and peasants in mere holes in the sand 
 appropriate to their insignificant lot in the world. 
 Seldom has the writer spent a stranger day 
 than one passed among the mountain cemeteries 
 in the neighbourhood of the ancient Lycopolis. 
 Perhaps a few words copied from a diary kept at 
 the time may help the reader who has not visited 
 the country to realise one of its more curious 
 aspects. 
 
 " The western range of hills here, near Asiut, pro- 
 jects in a shoulder or big bluff, which is perforated 
 in all directions with old tombs. The ground-sur- 
 face of loose stone and dust is divided at intervals 
 bv cliffs of limestone rock in which the tombs are 
 bored and tunnelled. Wherever fresh blasting and 
 landslips have laid bare the rock more borings of 
 the same kind are exposed. The hill is honey- 
 combed with them. Bones, skulls and ribs litter 
 the ground so thickly that it seems in many places 
 to consist of little else. Shreds and patches of 
 
 55 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 mummy-cloth lie about in all directions, sometimes 
 still tightly twined round shrivelled arms and 
 shoulders. It is a Golgotha, where the dead con- 
 gregate as thickly as the living in the valley. And 
 for their use it is exclusively preserved. No leaf or 
 blade of grass grows here. Nothing living intrudes 
 to question death's absolute supremacy." 
 
 In later centuries, it is true, the living made their 
 abode among these ranges, and the tombs of the 
 ancient Egyptians became the tenements of Christian 
 hermits. Yet these later lodgers were scarcely an 
 exception to the old rule, since at the least it was 
 appropriate that those who made it their aim to die 
 to the things of this world should turn to those gaunt 
 hills which from time immemorial had been the 
 abode of death. 
 
 The journal quoted from goes on to describe the 
 view from that place of skulls, and how the writer, 
 perched on the white crest of the hill with his feet 
 in bone-dust, looked down on a scene of fertihty, 
 rich even for Egypt : 
 
 "Far to north and south, level as water except 
 where small mud-hut villages in their groves of 
 feather-headed palms are dotted in relief upon its 
 surface, stretches the long band of luscious green 
 through which the Nile rolls, and in which seems 
 gathered and compressed all the fertility which 
 should have been scattered over the surrounding 
 hills and desert. The valley for the living, the hill 
 for the dead. The distinction of function is sharp 
 and is as sharply marked in Nature. As far, to a 
 yard, as the Nile reaches in its annual floods, the 
 
 56 
 
THE TYRANNY OF THE NILE 
 
 fertile soil extends. You can stand with one foot 
 in perennial crops and the other in desert sand. 
 There is no gainsaying evidence like this. No 
 peasant who watches the water flow and ebb but 
 knows, beyond the shadow of a doubt, from what 
 beneficent power all that makes life possible pro- 
 ceeds." 
 
 Every way we look at it we are brought back to 
 the thought of the Nile as a living, ever-active power, 
 a power unmistakably exerting its influence from 
 day to day and year to year over the life and 
 fortunes of every dweller in the valley. This must 
 always have been, and must always be, the Egyptian 
 point of view. The fact that the river has brought 
 Egypt grain by grain out of the heart of Africa, to 
 lay it down ripe for cultivation in this sequestered 
 corner of the continent, however interesting to a 
 student, is not likely to command the attention of 
 the average populace^of the country. These ancient 
 geological events are easily forgotten. We are not 
 concerned about such stale and antique favours, but 
 about those we receive to-day or expect to-morrow. 
 What seized the attention of the inhabitants of this 
 valley, what profoundly attracted their imagination, 
 and in the course of ages came to exert a distinct 
 influence, perhaps, on their character and the develop- 
 ment of their civilisation, was not the thought of 
 what the Nile had done, but what the Nile was 
 doing. It was such everyday and common sights 
 as we have been describing, it was the sight of the 
 new-laid ribs of mould along the river's course, that 
 had to be cherished and preserved, the sight of the 
 
 57 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 contrast ever in their eyes between the deathlike 
 sterility of mountain and desert and the luxuriant 
 productiveness of the fertilised valley ; it was the 
 realisation of the inexhaustible fecundity of the rich 
 soil brought and given to them by the river ; it was 
 sights and thoughts like these which must have 
 been continually impressing and influencing the 
 minds and imaginations of the Egyptians. Above 
 all it must have been the spectacle of the eagerly 
 awaited annual inundation, which must most 
 effectively have driven into their consciousness the 
 Nile's constant energy and consistent purpose. 
 " Blessed," begins the old Nile hymn — 
 
 '* Blessed be the good God, 
 
 The heaven-loving Nile, 
 
 The Father of the Gods of the holy Nine 
 
 Dwelling on the waters. 
 
 The plenty, wealth, and food of Egypt. 
 He maketh everybody live by himself, 
 
 Riches are in his path. 
 
 And plenteousness is in his fingers ; 
 
 The pious are rejoiced at his coming. 
 Thou art alone and self-created, 
 
 One knoweth not whence thou art. 
 But on the day thou comest forth and openest 
 thyself 
 
 Everybody is rejoicing. 
 Thou art a lord of many fish and gifts, 
 
 And thou bestowest plenteousness in Egypt. 
 The cycle of the holy Nine knoweth not whence 
 thou art. 
 
 Thou art their life. 
 
 58 
 
THE TYRANNY OF THE NILE 
 
 For when thou comest their offerings are re- 
 doubled 
 And their altars filled, 
 And they are shouting when thou appearest." 
 
 The second stanza of the hymn opens with the 
 lines : 
 
 " He giveth light on his coming from darkness ; 
 In the pastures of his cattle 
 His might produceth all : 
 What was not his moisture bringeth to light " ; 
 
 and concludes with the acclamation : 
 
 " Shine forth, shine forth, O Nile ! shine forth I 
 Giving life to his oxen by the pastures ! 
 Shine forth in glory, O Nile ! " 
 
 Such were the thoughts of the Egyptians, such 
 their attitude of mind in presence of the great river, 
 ever active, ever creative, in whose hands were food 
 and riches, and at whose coming the pious were 
 rejoiced. A traveller in the country, if he be sus- 
 ceptible at least to natural influences, cannot remain 
 long in the land without in some degree sympathising 
 with those thoughts and feelings. On him, too, as 
 he observes on all sides the evidences of the Nile's 
 creative and renovating influence, is cast, tentatively 
 yet perceptibly, the old Egyptian spell. Conscious 
 of its power it is inevitable that he should look back 
 into Egyptian history for symptoms of its effect. 
 Such an influence, an influence so potent, so clearly 
 defined, so strictly limited, could not, as he instinc- 
 tively feels, fail to leave recognisable traces on the 
 race subjected to it, 
 
 59 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 
 And when with this thought in his mind he 
 dips into history, almost immediately, as the main 
 characteristics of Egyptian life pass in review, there 
 appears something in their aspect — a huge grotesque 
 simplicity, a dreadful yet imposing monotony, as 
 though life were the repetition of an endless formula 
 which strikes him as somehow a rude reflection of 
 the natural conditions he sees around him. In vain 
 he dismisses the idea as an illusion. The longer he 
 stays in the country the more his imagination is 
 impressed by the weird regularity of its arrange- 
 ment. By degrees he comes to realise the com- 
 pleteness of the river's dominion, the dependence 
 of all life upon its rise and fall, and how, by that 
 monotonous action, life is held rigorously to the 
 reiteration of the same processes and expedients. 
 On the other hand, he gives himself to the study 
 of Egyptian civilisation, so strangely characterised 
 by its acquiescence in primitive routine ; and the 
 more he thus occupies himself the more difficult he 
 will find it to evade the sense of likeness between 
 the Egypt he sees, or Nature's Egypt, and the 
 Egypt he reads of, which, in its various manifesta- 
 tions of art, literature and science, and so on, we 
 think of as man's Egypt. Man's Egypt persists in 
 mimicking Nature's, and in the mechanical routine 
 which controls Egyptian civilisation the effect of 
 surrounding conditions of life seems only too clearly 
 apparent. 
 
 And why should this not be so ? How often has 
 it been observed that regularity of occupation leaves 
 its traces on the character, that,i for example, men 
 who are constantly occupied in tending machinery, 
 
 60 
 
THE TYRANNY OF THE NILE 
 whose movements are dictated, without need of 
 volition or conscious thought on their side, by the 
 movements of the mechanism they serve — how 
 often has it been observed that such people take 
 on the nature of the mechanism itself, that they are,. 
 as it were, assimilated by it, that they become perfect 
 and dexterous within their own groove, but incapable 
 of breaking away from that groove. As day by day 
 and year by year their attention is governed by the 
 revolution of a cylinder or the rise and fall of a 
 crank, do they not grow, as we significantly put 
 it, absorbed in their occupation, and does not all 
 capacity for independent thought desert them? 
 Certainly of all countries in the world Egypt is 
 that in which Nature approaches most nearly to 
 mechanical regularity and mechanical reiteration. 
 The mathematical arrangement of the country, 
 the absence of all cross-purposes and conflicting 
 elements, the clock-like punctuality of the annual 
 floods, are natural facts and conditions which not 
 only have always controlled and dominated Egyptian 
 life, but which seem to have impressed on lite itself 
 their own rule of unprogressive, unvarying rej5etition. 
 To several writers this idea of Egypt's mechanical 
 influence and of the natural effects of such an influ- 
 ence seems to have occurred. Life on the banks of 
 the Nile, as Professor Sayce tells us, is a life of 
 steady but curiously regular toil. The peasant is 
 timed by the river. What he does must fit in with 
 what the river does. The consequence is his work 
 is " monotonously regular " to a degree very difficult 
 for us to realise. "There are no unexpected breaks 
 in it ; no moments when a sudden demand is made 
 
 6i 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 
 for exceptional labour. The farmer's year is all 
 mapped out for him beforehand ; what his fore- 
 fathers have done for unnumbered centuries before 
 him, he, too, has to do almost to a day." To 
 such causes may have been due, perhaps, Professor 
 Sayce thinks, that "incapacity for abstract thought" 
 which he distinguishes as characteristic of Egyptian 
 civilisation. It is strange that Professor Sayce did 
 not push home the idea. He throws it out as a hint 
 in the early pages of his book, but does not recur to 
 it. Yet evidently, if there is anything in it, it is of 
 vital consequence. We find again, in Mr. Hogarth's 
 thoughtful and learned work on the Nearer East, a 
 passage of much the same purport : " Life is full of 
 labour where is no sky-sent rain, but only irrigation 
 from a river which will not do its part unless canals 
 and drains be cleared annually with infinite toil of 
 man and beast, and water be raised by hand through 
 a twelve-hour day." But this labour is all pre- 
 arranged and unvarying. 
 
 "The Nile, crawling year by year over the flats, 
 now a little higher, now a little lower, giving all the 
 possibility of existence that there is, and admitting 
 of no variety in the annual work of preparation for 
 its coming, or of utilising what it leaves [on going, 
 makes life monotonous to a degree hard to realise 
 in a zone of quick-changing skies." 
 
 And what was the result ? Mr. Hogarth's con- 
 clusion is that of Professor Sayce : such a life was 
 bound to affect mental and spiritual development, 
 and did affect it. 
 
 " Despite all his physical energy, the Nilot is bound 
 
THE TYRANNY OF THE NILE 
 not only to lack enterprise but to direct all his 
 spiritual, as his physical, vision to earth. He takes 
 no thought of the sky, nor of any God therein. The 
 cult of the Sun in old Egypt was an exotic above 
 the Delta ; nor anywhere does it seem to have had 
 the usual characteristics, imagery or consequences 
 of a sky-worship. The real gods were on the 
 earth or under it, clothed with bestial or human 
 forms, worshipped with myriad superstitious ob- 
 servances, but without reference to religious or 
 social ideals." 
 
 From such passages as these the reader will under- 
 stand my desire to link what was said in the last 
 chapter, concerning the correspondence between 
 Egyptian art and life and the low state of intellectual 
 development which that art reveals — to link this 
 with my recollections of the country itself, and the 
 curious conditions of life which have always pre- 
 vailed in it. Through life and art we traced the 
 same unvarying round, the same mechanical repe- 
 tition of the archaic and the childish, deducing from 
 it the people's lack of intellectual initiative and 
 spiritual enlightenment. Here, in Nature and the 
 physical arrangement of the country, we are struck 
 by the same order of phenomena, the same iteration 
 of circumstances, making of life itself a lesson learnt 
 by rote ; and now we have Professor Sayce and 
 Mr. Hogarth inferring from these outward circum- 
 stances just what we inferred from Egyptian art — 
 namely, the limitation of the Egyptian's " spiritual 
 and physical vision to earth," and his inveterate 
 *' incapacity for abstract thought." The two are 
 
 63 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 
 counterparts The narrow valley with its fixed 
 boundaries, secluded and cut off from the world ; 
 the Nile, regular as a chronometer, controlling 
 the life of the valley with punctual ebb and flow ; 
 that life itself lived to order and strictly under its 
 great taskmaster's eye, reiterating monotonously the 
 same round of simple tasks — what are these but a 
 set of circumstances in themselves archaic ? Think 
 of such a life in terms of form, and you evolve the 
 stereotyped yet childish conventions of an Egyptian 
 bas-relief. The grasp in which Egyptian art and 
 life are held, is it not, after all, the grasp of the 
 Nile ? 
 
 I cannot help turning aside here for a moment to 
 remind the reader, by way of corroboration, of 
 another instance of river influence corresponding 
 in many ways to that which we have been speaking 
 of. The twin civilisation to the Egyptian was the 
 Assyrian, and in several striking particulars the 
 resemblance between the two is obvious. The 
 influence of the same kind of routine as that which 
 dominated Egyptian life is unmistakably present in 
 the Euphrates valley. All that we know of the life 
 of that valley points to the existence of the same 
 conditions, the same inexhaustible fertility of soil, 
 and the same unvarying monotony of daily work 
 which characterised the life of Egypt. In her 
 religion and art, those two most eloquent witnesses 
 to all that in a race is fundamental, the primitive 
 influence in Assyria remains indelible. Whoever is 
 familiar with the obstinate survival of beast-worship 
 on the Nile, typified by the jackal and vulture- 
 headed gods of the Egyptian Pantheon, will be 
 6+ 
 
THE TYRANNY OF THE NILE 
 struck, though in lesser degree, by the same survival 
 on the Euphrates. 
 
 *' Behind the human figures of the Semitic gods 
 the primitively pictorial character of the cuneiform 
 signs enables us to discern the lineaments of figures 
 that belong to a wholly different sphere of religious 
 thought. They are the figures not of men but of 
 brute beasts. The name of En-lil was denoted by a 
 composite sign which represented the word elim, * a 
 ram ' ; that of Ea by the ideograph which stood for 
 darUf * the antelope.' En-lil, accordingly, was once 
 a ram ; Ea, an antelope.'* 
 
 It is true the idea of beast-worship was relegated 
 in Babylonia to the secondary order of divinities, 
 but it remained the conception of the mass of the 
 people. " Whereas in Egypt it was the gods them- 
 selves who joined the head of the beast to the body 
 of the man, in Babylonia it was only the semi- 
 divine spirits and monsters of the popular creed who 
 were there partly bestial and partly human." I 
 italicise the two words " popular creed," for the 
 point I wish to emphasise is that in the Euphrates 
 valley, as in the Nile valley, though to a less extent, 
 the archaic conception of religion retained its hold 
 upon the life of the nation. This view Professor 
 Sayce expressly endorses. 
 
 '^ The Semite, though he moulded the later religion 
 of Babylonia, could not transform it altogether. 
 The Sumerian element in the population was never 
 extirpated, and it is probable that if we knew^ more 
 of the religion of the people as opposed to the 
 
 E 65 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 official theology, we should find that it remained 
 comparatively little affected by Semitic influence." 
 
 An obstinate survival of the archaic, that is the 
 striking feature in the religion, of the Euphrates. 
 And the same is true of its art. That art, represented 
 by the palaces and sculptures of Assyria, itself an 
 offshoot of the older Babylonian empire and soaked 
 with the Babylonian influence, is indeed quite 
 different in form and type from Egyptian ; but in 
 idea and limitations it is strikingly similar. In 
 architecture structural forms are evolved without 
 regard to the function they fulfil ; in sculpture the 
 human figure is represented with a cast-iron con- 
 vention which seems wholly oblivious of any notion 
 of progress or development. The visitor to the 
 British Museum will be struck by the identity in 
 these respects between the art of the Euphrates and 
 the Nile. The figures of Assyrian sculpture, the 
 huge man-headed, winged bulls, for example, so 
 characteristic of that art, remain always in idea and 
 conception obstinately archaic. They are entirely 
 lacking in naturalness, flexibility, variety, life. The 
 body, limbs and head are not so united, or conceived 
 in such relation to each other, as to form a real 
 figure. Intellectually the work is of the childish or 
 primitive epoch. Yet, like the Egyptian, it is work 
 not of a childish epoch through which the nation 
 was passing but of a childish epoch in which the 
 nation was permanently abiding, Mark the strong, 
 firm, precise handling of those impossible legs and 
 feet and arms, the trenchant exactitude of the out- 
 lines ; the tight curls of hair and beard, each curl a 
 66 
 
THE TYRANNY OF THE NILE 
 
 little formula endlessly repeated, primitive yet invari- 
 able ; the eye and eyelid, the curl of the nostril, the 
 formal articulation of sinew and muscle — these are 
 all indeed archaic in conception, but they are not 
 archaic in execution. They are carved with that 
 strength, assurance and absolute uniformity which 
 only centuries of constant repetition can engender. 
 As in Egyptian art, so here there is something 
 strange and at variance with usual experience in 
 this weird conjunction of firm and perfect handling 
 with immature, stunted thought. There is, quite 
 obviously, no hope of development in an art of this 
 nature. It will multiply replicas of itself without 
 end. It has worn a groove in which it will revolve 
 for ever. 
 
 The persislcnca of the primitive, the childish, the 
 archaic, that is the main characteristic of the religion 
 and art of the Euphrates as it is of the religion and 
 art of the Nile. Such resemblances — resemblances 
 so striking and fundamental — prepare us for, and 
 lead us to expect, a corresponding resemblance in 
 the life-conditions of the two countries ; and this 
 further resemblance is, of course, forthcoming. 
 Both these ancient, immovable civilisations were the 
 gift of rivers. The waters of the Tigris and the 
 Euphrates were distributed over the Mesopotamian 
 valley by a system of irrigation the most complete 
 and grandiose in scale ever perhaps attempted. 
 Travellers to this day describe the remains of the 
 long regular canals built at intervals across the 
 plain which carried the main supplies of water and 
 which were tapped by the lesser conduits which 
 nourished each farm and garden. With the decline 
 
 67 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 of a central governing power capable of working 
 and maintaining these great engineering works the 
 whole system has fallen to ruin. Dams, sluices, 
 embankments, locks, have crumbled and decayed ; 
 canals have dried up or burst their banks, and for 
 many centuries agriculture has declined until the 
 whole country has been overlaid with desert sand 
 interspersed with a few stagnant marshes. Cities, 
 the richest of the ancient world, have become so 
 totally obliterated that their very sites are ignored or 
 are marked only by shapeless mounds. Yet vestiges 
 and historical records in sufficient quantity remain 
 to prove the almost unexampled agricultural wealth 
 of a region identified with the fabled Garden of 
 Eden, and the possible revival of that ancient 
 fertihty remains one of the most alluring problems 
 presented to modern enterprise and science. 
 
 Here, then, in the Tigris-Euphrates valley, we 
 have another ancient civilisation presented to our 
 notice comparable in all its main aspects to the 
 civilisation of the Nile ; comparable to it in the 
 immovable and fixedly archaic character of its 
 religion and its art, and comparable to it, too, in 
 the conditions of life out of which the religion and 
 the art grew. In both cases these conditions of 
 life were based upon an unwonted and perennial 
 fertility of soil, which fertility again was not only 
 due to but was constantly regulated and maintained 
 by the overflow of the great rivers which ran through 
 the land. Thus in both countries the note of 
 unvarying routine which distinguished their civili- 
 sation is struck originally in their physical formation 
 and in the mode of life dictated by it. The Tigris 
 68 
 
THE TYRANNY OF THE NILE 
 
 and Euphrates had the same hold on life in 
 Mesopotamia as the Nile had on life in Egypt. 
 
 I must confess that I offer these considerations to 
 the reader with a certain diffidence. I am aware 
 that the theory of the " influence of environment/' 
 as it has been called, is somewhat out of fashion. 
 Time was when it was supposed to explain every- 
 thing. Now, as a consequence of those exaggerated 
 pretensions, it is permitted to explain nothing. 
 Such is our method of reasoning. We take up a 
 theory — evolution, environment, or what not — and 
 fall in love with it; we cast on it the onus of 
 " explaining " the universe ; by-and-by we discover 
 its inadequacy for such a task, and forthwith we 
 discard it altogether and take up with a new solution 
 Were we to admit the idea of many contributory 
 causes, of many influences, sometimes blending and 
 sometimes conflicting, yet all more or less opera- 
 tive, our advance in knowledge would possibly be 
 smoother and more consistent. It is easy to overdo 
 the environment theory, to make it explain too 
 much and too exactly ; on the other hand, it is 
 absurd to ignore it altogether. Who can associate 
 for a day with a desert-bred Bedouin ; who, for the 
 matter of that, can reflect for a moment on the 
 characters of sailors or Scotch Highlanders, or on 
 the difference between town and country-bred 
 people, and not perceive that this influence is 
 indeed a very powerful formative cause ? Naturally^ 
 where the physical conditions are most simple, 
 strongly marked, and continuous, there their effects 
 on character will be most apparent. They may not 
 originate racial characteristics, but they may in such 
 
 69 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 cases control their development or dictate their 
 limitations. Granting them a certain influence, it 
 seems inevitable that conditions which call for 
 varied efforts, constant adaptability, and an intel- 
 ligent appreciation of all kinds of natural influences, 
 will be the conditions which, as they exercise the 
 faculties most variously, will most favour mental 
 development. If this is so, it would be difficult to 
 imagine any life less favourable to intellectual advance 
 than the life of passive routine of the Nile valley — a 
 life self-centred, shut off from the world, intensely 
 monotonous, and from year to year and generation 
 to generation entirely dominated and controlled by 
 the river's automatic action. Without wishing to 
 press the point unduly, I cannot help feeling that to 
 realise intimately, by an effort of the imagination 
 based on knowledge of the country, the conditions 
 of life under which the Egyptians lived, is to 
 recognise, between those conditions and the art, 
 religion, literature and science which ensued, 
 points of resemblance which it is impossible to 
 ignore or explain away. 
 
 Along the banks of the Nile stand at intervals, 
 like confessionals, the great temples in which Egypt 
 has embodied its most secret thoughts and aspira- 
 tions. Let us enter one for a last moment. The 
 influence of the river pervades the building. 
 Throngs of ponderous columns bulge upward out 
 of lotus calyxes to terminate in the heavy buds and 
 blossoms of the sacred river flower. Again and 
 again the same buds or open blossoms appear. 
 They are held in the hands of sculptured figures 
 and nod over the foreheads of gods and goddesses. 
 70 
 
THE TYRANNY OF THE NILE 
 Friezes are formed of their stalks and heads, and 
 bands of ornament composed of lotuses enrich the 
 walls. But most of all it is the groves of huge 
 shafts, distended, ill-proportioned, outraging every 
 rational law of the evolution of structural form — 
 most of all it is these imposing representations of 
 the Nile's emblem which are responsible for the 
 character of the whole interior. These huge obese 
 features may be offensive to all our notions of 
 structural propriety, but they were never invented 
 to express a structural purpose. They were invented 
 to express the ruling sentiment of Egypt — adoration 
 of the Nile. It is difficult to convey to one who 
 has not felt their presence the influence of the river 
 which exudes from these dense-growing groves of 
 bulbs — for they are more bulbs than shafts. All 
 the feeling we associate with swamps and marshes, 
 with sleepy, lapping water, with the succulent, rank 
 growth of reeds and sedges, inhabits these dim 
 interiors. The influence which dominates Egypt is, 
 in the Egyptian temple, focusscd and concentrated. 
 All other considerations, all the ideals pertaining 
 to a structural art, are discarded that the presence 
 and the power of the river may receive complete 
 embodiment. We may not approve the motive, but 
 we cannot deny the force of its effect. The Greeks, 
 in their architecture, eliminated all local influences 
 for the sake of purely artistic considerations. With 
 equal disinterestedness the Egyptians eliminated 
 all artistic considerations in order that a local in- 
 fluence might exercise over their art the dominion 
 it already exercised over their lives. 
 What might be the limits of such an influence ? 
 
 71 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 We Europeans, who boast our intellectual inde- 
 pendence, if we lived on the bounty of a river in a 
 river-created country, knowing of no resources but 
 what the river brought, our hopes and fears centred 
 upon it, the habits of our daily life regulated 
 by it, our traditions and literature and religion 
 saturated by the slow infiltration of ages with the 
 river's influence — should we have fared as the 
 Egyptians fared? Should we have accepted our 
 river's beneficent tyranny, and would that tyranny 
 have extended its sway from our outward lives to 
 our inward habits of thought ? Would the power 
 to express rational purposes in artistic forms have 
 been denied us, and for five thousand years should 
 we have been content to build our temple columns 
 in the likeness of river bulbs ? To feel that it 
 might have been so, and under what compulsion it 
 would have become so, is to get in touch, perhaps, 
 with the life of ancient Egypt. 
 
 So strong is the influence of Nile architecture 
 that sometimes it has seemed to the present writer 
 as if, during hours spent in the dim colonnades 
 of the old temples, he had unconsciously imbibed 
 some of the nature and ideas of the ancient 
 worshippers in these places. It seemed that their 
 life had become his life and their thoughts his 
 thoughts ; that the ebb and flow of the river rocked 
 his existence as it had rocked theirs, and that 
 the rows of the white, dead hills bounded the uni- 
 verse for him as for them. Nothing, it seemed, 
 could ever intrude here to break the reigning 
 routine or disturb the unvarying iteration of the 
 months. 
 72 
 
THE TYRANNY OF THE NILE 
 "To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, 
 Creeps in this petty pace from day to day 
 To the last syllable of recorded time." 
 
 Hard by, the Nile itself rolls its majestic flood, 
 surveying its crops and lands and people with a 
 great landlord's benignant pride. " I made this 
 Egypt," it seems to murmur to itself, '* and I made 
 the Egyptians. It was I also who built those 
 temples, and by-and-by, when my people live once 
 more undisturbed under my rule, I shall, perhaps, 
 build' others like them. What does it matter if 
 there is a break in the series : after all, has not 
 that often happened before ? " 
 
 73 
 
CHAPTER III 
 ENTER THE GREEK 
 
 The new factor at work : The movement in Greek archaic art 
 an intellectual movement : The Greek point of view : Intellec- 
 tual bias of the Greek mind : In what respects sculpture is 
 calculated to express that bias : The Greek instinct for defini- 
 tion : Its restrictions and limitations : Greek religion : The 
 Greek idea of death : Gods and tombs : Greek poetry : Ana- 
 logy between Myron and iEschylus, Phidias and Sophocles : 
 What Greek art cannot give 
 
 VERY likely the practice, which has become uni- 
 versal in these specialising days, of treating art as if 
 it could be disjoined from the life out of which it 
 grew, may have its conveniences, but it is responsible 
 none the less for the loss of much of the interest 
 of the subject. We lose, by so treating it, a part of 
 the contents of art. Out of the current criticisms 
 of Florentine, Venetian, Sienese, and other schools 
 of Italian painting, how much do we gather of the 
 inward intellectual and emotional life which found 
 these modes of utterance, and which, through these 
 several yet converging currents, went to make up 
 the Italian Renaissance ? From the many books 
 written by architects on architecture, treating, as 
 they do, that great subject from the technical point 
 of view, as a matter of material and structural law, 
 what do we divine of the national spirit which in 
 the great building eras moulded our cathedrals and 
 abbeys in its own likeness ? Art has a humanand 
 
 74 
 
ENTER THE GREEK 
 dramatic quality. It is the most vivid, the most 
 convincing and eloquent expression of the life of 
 its own age which the past has handed down to us ; 
 and more especially is this true of the great periods 
 of art, the creative epochs as they may be called ; 
 for it is the art of such epochs which is fullest of 
 life, and which has the greatest collective impulse 
 of conviction to back it. This, indeed, it is which 
 gives to such epochs the aspect of agreement and 
 uniformity which we donote by the word " style." 
 They have this note of uniformity, of style, pre- 
 cisely because they are supported in life by a solid 
 body of conviction. When a style reigns, no other 
 but that language is possible. All men are clear as 
 to what they have to say. At such epochs art sums 
 up and presents to us in visible form the spirit of 
 its age ; and to neglect this message in order to 
 emphasise the merely aesthetic importance of the 
 subject is, it seems to me, deliberately to jettison 
 the best part of its cargo. 
 
 An example of this apparent waste I have in view. 
 There has recently appeared a thoughtful and 
 scholarly work on Greek sculpture by Professor 
 Ernest Gardner. It bears the title "Six Greek 
 Sculptors," and the bulk of it consists of an inte- 
 resting analysis of the six most famous of the 
 Greek sculptors, from Myron to Lysippus. The 
 first and last chapters, however, are concerned with 
 the rise and decline of the art — that is, with its 
 Archaic and Hellenistic periods — and it is these 
 two chapters which best illustrate the point I wish 
 to examine. 
 
 The subject of the first chapter is the gradual 
 
 75 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 transition from the old stereotyped and unnatural 
 figures of Egyptian sculpture to the warm and 
 living forms of Greek art. The progress of this 
 transition is at first by little steps. The antique 
 figures are, to begin with, imitated in all their con- 
 ventional stiffness. Yet even in these earliest 
 adaptations a careful scrutiny will detect signs of 
 dissatisfaction with the old style and of a hesitating 
 and tentative advance in the direction of the new. 
 They contain a promise, and *' if we try to analyse 
 more closely wherein exactly this promise lies, we 
 shall find that almost every archaic statue in Greece 
 bears a trace in some part or other of direct study 
 and observation of Nature." It is in this sentence, 
 perhaps, that Professor Gardner comes closest to 
 explaining the change of outlook which inaugurated 
 the change of style in art. But he does not press 
 the point. A few words are added. It is pointed 
 out that an indication of this love of direct personal 
 investigation may be found in ever so slight reve- 
 lations, " in the treatment of hand or knee-joints or 
 toes, or in the fold of skin at the elbow ; but it 
 is rarely, if ever, absent ; and it shows that the 
 artist, while content to repeat the conventional 
 type, tried to make it his own, to give it some 
 individual stamp, by adding to it something, how- 
 ever insignificant, of his own direct observation." 
 
 It would seem as if, in that repeated phrase, 
 "direct observation," Professor Gardner had 
 touched the inward intellectual incentive that was 
 pushing the sculptor forward on the path of pro- 
 gress, and we expect that he will proceed to explain 
 the nature of that motive and link it to its effect on 
 
 76 
 
'•.',' 
 
 Besides detail of modelltfig notice the inward and 
 suppressed vitality of the whole figure^ soon to find 
 complete expression 
 
 APOLLO. ARCHAIC GREEK p. 76 
 
ENTER THE GREEK 
 
 art. This, however, he does not do. The purely 
 artistic side of the question, the degrees by which 
 sculpture advances from mechanism to Hfe, are 
 treated with due knowledge and lucidity ; but the 
 corresponding mental change and process of 
 development out of which the artistic movement 
 proceeded and of which it was the measure and the 
 inevitable result, are practically ignored. The 
 consequence is that the subject of sculpture itself 
 is left, so to speak, hanging in the air, and, not 
 being related to life, is not really explained at all. 
 Let us endeavour, if we can, to gain a rough idea 
 of the kind of interest which is thus lost sight of. 
 
 What is the difference on the intellectual side 
 between the civilisations of Egypt and Greece ? 
 The Egyptian civilisation, as has been already 
 pointed out, was an affair of routine. Its pro- 
 ficiency was the proficiency not of thought but 
 practice. All that practice, all that endless repeti- 
 tion, perpetuated under unvarying conditions of 
 life, and itself reflecting the deadly monotony of 
 those conditions, could achieve, Egypt achieved. 
 But, as all records and vestiges conspire to prove, 
 she laboured from the beginning under an unshak- 
 able apathy as regards intellectual curiosity and 
 initiative. Five thousand years pass in Egypt like 
 a watch in the night. The childish usages and 
 childish thoughts which greet us as the curtain 
 rises hold the stage still as it falls. Routine has 
 reached here, you would say, its final phase of 
 absolute petrifaction. There is nowhere a trace 
 of that movement, that development, that growth 
 which we associate with the inward activity of the 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 mind. It would seem that, under its load of pre- 
 cedent, intellectual initiative had ceased to operate 
 and had sunk into a state of mental inertia. 
 
 And in all these traits the art of the country was 
 but a replica of the life it emanated from. Could 
 anything be more entirely childlike and primitive 
 than those conventional figures which decorate the 
 walls of the Nile temples, drawn just as children 
 draw, with face in profile, shoulders to the front, 
 and feet in profile once more ? Doubtless in exe- 
 cution they are perfectly skilful ; a lesson learnt by 
 rote and repeated for fifty centuries is apt to be 
 well learnt. But if the hand is forward, how back- 
 ward is the brain ! An Egyptian sculptor, as we 
 surmise, could almost have carved one of his 
 stereotyped forms in his sleep, so uninformed by 
 any trait gathered from direct observation are they, 
 so utterly mindless, so purely a matter of mere 
 mechanical iteration. It would be difficult to con- 
 ceive a more significant summary of a civilisation, 
 curiously lacking in all its aspects in intellectual 
 vitality, than these pathetically inanimate figures, 
 repeated with parrot-like monotony through suc- 
 cessive dynasties. Here is an art which is a faithful 
 facsimile indeed of the life it was begotten of. 
 Here is the load of precedent with a vengeance, 
 and here the mental inertia. 
 
 We pass on into the Greek epoch, and no sooner 
 do we enter it than we are aware of a subtle, signi- 
 ficant change. The sculpture begins to move, to 
 strive as with fetters. Backed by the authority 
 of immemorial usage, the Egyptian conventions 
 impose themselves on the budding art of Greece. 
 
 78 
 
ENTER THE GREEK 
 
 But from the first their authority is questioned. 
 Unwillingly, with a profound reluctance and dis- 
 content, the Greek repeats the old impossible 
 features and attitudes. " It is not so, it is not so," 
 he mutters to himself, and by-and-by he essays his 
 keener perception on some minor point, and a 
 hand, a foot, a knee-joint, is carved with some 
 attempt at natural representation. Thus, under the 
 stimulus, as Professor Gardner tells us, *' of direct 
 study and observation of Nature," sculpture in 
 Greek hands develops flexibility and expressiveness. 
 But what does this direct study and observation 
 imply ? Are we to suppose that it is a purely 
 artistic process, that it begins and ends in art, or is 
 it rather itself of mental origin, arguing a changed 
 attitude of mind, an impulse of curiosity and a 
 desire to realise the truth about things such as had 
 never quickened Egyptian thought? Will the 
 reader place himself in the position of one who, 
 having been long accustomed to make a certain 
 conventional and oft-repeated diagram do duty for 
 the human figure, suddenly awakens to the per- 
 ception that the diagram bears in fact no real 
 resemblance to a figure. What is the nature of 
 that sudden awakening ? It is not optical. The 
 sense of sight conveys the image of the diagram 
 to the brain, and it is there, in the brain, that the 
 conception of its inadequacy and unlikeness to the 
 original takes place, as also it is from there that the 
 succeeding efforts and experiments in the direction 
 of real resemblance emanate. 
 
 In short, the awakening which we see in Greek 
 archaic art is the reflection of a mental awakening. 
 
 79 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 Any one who has learnt to think of art as the 
 expression of hfe, looking at this art of the Greeks 
 alone, and noting its striving after truthful represen- 
 tation and its determination from the beginning to 
 see and depict things as they are, will know that he 
 is in the presence of a transition not less important 
 intellectually than artistically. Through the long 
 Egyptian night intellect, the faculty which reasons, 
 compares, analyses and defines, has slept. Now it 
 wakens. I say that an intelligent critic, surveying 
 the progress of art only, and thinking of art only, 
 would lay his finger on the quick-coming realism of 
 early Greek art, and observe that we had here 
 marks of a sudden intellectual vitahty such as 
 history until then exhibits no trace of. 
 
 And he would have been right. The coming to 
 life of the old archaic forms of sculpture was but 
 one sign among many of a revolution in thought 
 which has profoundly affected the character of all 
 subsequent civilisation. The movement in art 
 synchronises with a corresponding movement in 
 literature, in science, in politics, in philosophy. 
 Professor Gardner's half-dozen sculptors cover the 
 wonderful two centuries in which the Greek intellect 
 blossomed, fruited, faded. But, though one sign 
 among many only, Greek sculpture is perhaps the 
 most thoroughly characteristic and adequate present- 
 ment of the new movement of the mind which 
 exists. It is so because between the nature of the 
 art of sculpture and the nature of the intellectualism 
 it grew out of, there is a profound affinity. 
 
 It is usually the case that when the mind takes a 
 certain ply, when it opens up a new line of inquiry 
 80 
 
ENTER THE GREEK 
 
 or fruitful speculation, and devotes itself, as it 
 generally does, to the new research with an ardour 
 which seems commensurate with the stores of ore 
 latent in the hitherto unexplored reef — it is usually 
 the case that this very ardour, though productive of 
 great results, yet being directed to one end and 
 exercising but one side of the mind, has the effect 
 of leaving another side and other faculties unused 
 and undeveloped. Intellect's awakening had this 
 effect upon Greek culture. Fascinated by the novel 
 experience of thinking, Greek culture, despite its 
 versatility, came to be dominated by an intellectual 
 order of ideas and precepts. The Greek versatility 
 was essentially an intellectual versatility. Moreover, 
 following its chief activity, the Greek mind developed 
 within strictly intellectual limitations. The most 
 striking consequences of this intellectual bias and 
 the limitations it imposed are to be found in the 
 Greek love of the definite and in the Greek passion 
 for definition. All that is clear-cut and articulate 
 the Greek mind adores ; all that is in the least vague 
 and indeterminate it detests. It could not but be so. 
 The operations of intellect being confined to the 
 sphere of the natural and the intelligible, it can only 
 act where facts of a finite nature give it foothold. 
 Accordingly the tendency of an exclusive cultivation 
 of the intellectual faculty will be to restrict human 
 ideas within the bounds of the intelligible and the 
 definable. 
 
 Most emphatically was this the case with the 
 Greeks. They, for the first time, exploited the idea 
 of intellectual definition, and it soon followed that 
 they would admit no thought which would not 
 
 F 8i 
 
THE WORKS OF MMsr 
 submit itself to definition. Now there is a whole 
 order of ideas which, spiritual in their nature, 
 refuse to submit themselves to definition, but with 
 these ideas, even, the Greeks so dealt as to bring them 
 within range, as it were, of their favourite faculty. 
 
 In considering these matters, what is significant 
 is not a people's use and common knowledge of 
 such phrases as " the divine," " the supernatural," 
 '^ the godlike " and so on, nor even its faith in such 
 existences, but its interpretation of them and the 
 meaning it assigns to them. A people may possess 
 the liveliest faith in its divinity or divinities, and yet 
 its conception of divinity may have in it little of a 
 divine or spiritual nature. For as it is possible to 
 lift all material phenomena into the spiritual sphere, 
 so is it possible to lower spiritual ideas to the 
 material sphere. Between the material and the 
 spiritual there is no fixed gulf. The mind that lays 
 itself open to spiritual promptings and inspirations 
 will find all its observations of Nature and its earthly 
 surroundings quite altered and transformed. It will 
 find that Nature herself becomes endued with an 
 infinite significance, and that, as part and parcel of 
 that infinitude, she herself becomes shrouded in a 
 kind of mystery, and the thoughts and feelings she 
 suggests do not admit of articulation and refuse to 
 be exactly defined. Thus is it when the spiritual 
 sense is developed ; its meaning, and with its 
 meaning its mystery and vagueness, encroach upon 
 the territory of intellect, and forthwith, before its 
 melting touch, things begin to lose their finite 
 exactitude and precision of form. This happens 
 when the spirit invades the dominions of intellect. 
 82 
 
ENTER THE GREEK 
 But something quite different happens when, as in 
 the case of the Greeks, intellect invades the spiritual 
 domain. It is not then the finite which becomes 
 infinite, but the infinite which becomes finite. 
 Spiritual conceptions are treated intellectually. 
 They lose much of their indefinable nature, and 
 become endowed with intelligible attributes and 
 distinct forms. The thoughts of a people on 
 matters of faith and religion are always its most 
 characteristic thoughts, and nothing gives one a 
 stronger perception of the humane and rootedly 
 intellectual cast of the Greek mind than its notions 
 of divinity. The Greek gods are mortals because 
 no thought is entertained of them which transcends 
 clear expression. Up to the human limits, up to 
 the measure of human understanding, they are 
 realised and represented ; but no attempt is ever 
 made to follow them into the spiritual sphere and, 
 by the soul's act of contemplation, see them as they 
 are. Such aspirations were irrational. In short, 
 the anthropomorphic instinct of the Greek mind 
 was the natural result of its intellectual bias. 
 
 But what was, and what was bound to be, the 
 effect upon art of this mental bias ? All races turn 
 to the art which best expresses their own character. 
 A people in love with definition, and who are sworn 
 to entertain only such ideas or aspects of ideas as 
 admit of definition, will turn to the art which can 
 best and most vigorously define. But without doubt 
 that art is sculpture. Sculpture is definition. The 
 sculptor undertakes to express his ideas in a hard 
 material, in curt, distinct lines, in concrete and 
 exactly articulated forms. In other words, he 
 
 83 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 
 undertakes to define his ideas. The Greeks, who 
 wanted all things defined and had no use for any- 
 thing beyond its definable stage, threw themselves 
 with a sort of avidity on the art of sculpture and 
 made it peculiarly their own. It filled a quite 
 different place in their lives to such arts as, from time 
 to time, are practised by, and more or less restricted 
 to, a select group of men of genius. It is clear that, 
 for generations before the art attained to any pitch 
 of excellence, it was used among the Greeks popularly 
 as a kind of rough native dialect. The multitude of 
 votive offerings which filled the local shrines of 
 Greece, Cyprus or Rhodes, and for the most part 
 took the form of statues and statuettes, in which, 
 rude as they are, Professor Gardner already remarks 
 the characteristic Greek tendency towards anthro- 
 pomorphism, attest by their numbers the popularity 
 of the art in its primitive stage of development. 
 In the same way the apparently universal custom of 
 carving scenes in memory of dead friends and 
 relatives and setting them up by the wayside of the 
 old "Streets of Tombs," where they still serve in 
 some cases the purpose of national galleries of 
 sculpture, prove how perfectly the art had assimi- 
 lated itself to the national temperament. Sculpture 
 from the first, in short, was a Greek vernacular, and 
 as such it was instinctively understood. In the 
 tomb scenes, for example, the limitations natural to 
 the art are instinctively respected. Dealing as they 
 do with the awful mystery of death, they contrive to 
 make no mystery of it at all, for they treat only so 
 much of the subject as is intelligible and can be put 
 into exact form. A steady, farewell look, a woman 
 
 84 
 
ENTER THE GREEK 
 
 veiling herself, the lingering handshake of one who 
 starts on a long journey — such are the moments, such 
 the aspects of the subject chosen. Separation, loneli- 
 ness, sorrow, resignation, fortitude, are the sugges- 
 tions, mortal in kind, rather than any immortal 
 suggestions of spiritual hope and a life beyond the 
 horizon-line of this, which the idea of death 
 awakened in the Greek mind. They were finely 
 and adequately treated, in the noblest spirit of 
 reason. There is no weakness or despair, or vain 
 complaint, in these farewells ; nothing but dignity 
 and a grave composure. But if human weakness is 
 absent, so, too, is spiritual confidence. All that side 
 of the subject is rigorously shut off. " Stick to what 
 you know, stick to what reason and intellect vouch 
 for " ; such seem the instructions under which all 
 these artists work. **That we must part, that 
 separation is bitter, that it is to be borne with 
 fortitude— this reason and intellect affirm, and this 
 only; thus much therefore carve, but carve no 
 more." 
 
 What I wish to point out to the reader is the 
 very strong resemblance which exists between 
 Greek ways of thinking and feeling on the one 
 hand, and the art of sculpture itself on the other. 
 It will be evident to any one who endeavours to 
 represent a group or figure in terms of sculpture — 
 that is to say, in terms of form — that the first 
 indispensable preliminary is that the mind's con- 
 ception of what it wishes to produce should be 
 perfectly definite and distinct. This is not the case 
 with painting, which can deal as much as it pleases 
 in the mystery of light and shade and in vague 
 
 8s 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 emotional suggestion ; nor is it the case, of course, 
 with poetry. But in the case of sculpture, though 
 sculpture can convey thoughts of the greatest 
 subtlety, yet the condition is always present that 
 such thoughts must submit to exactitude of defini- 
 tion. He who wishes to present a subject in the 
 precisely articulated terms of chiselled marble must 
 carry in his mind an image of corresponding pre- 
 cision. But these images of precision were, as I 
 have endeavoured to point out, the very order of 
 ideas which the Greeks affected. Their strong 
 rational bias led them to accept nothing beyond 
 the stage at which it could give a clear account 
 of itself — beyond the stage, that is to say, in which 
 the art of sculpture could deal with it. In other 
 words, the Greek mind, intellectually disposed as it 
 always was, was constantly and instinctively at work 
 preparing subjects for the sculptor and preventing 
 those subjects from getting beyond his control. 
 I have spoken of Greek religious ideas and of the 
 tendency in the Greek world to reduce all such 
 ideas to finite, comprehensible terms. But is it not 
 evident that in thus bringing divine ideas within 
 range of definition the Greeks were also bringing 
 them within the range of sculpture ? The Greek 
 gods and goddesses, if creatures so mortal can bear 
 the name, wrought by Greek chisels in firm marble 
 contours, calm and self-possessed, unvexed by any 
 tumult of soul, unperplexed by any effort of the 
 artist to reach up to more than he could express — 
 to what do they owe their perfection as examples of 
 sculpture ? They owe it to the fact that the whole 
 process of Greek thought had prepared them for 
 86 
 
The lady is represented exactly as she was iti life. 
 Death plays no part in the thing. Compare ivith 
 the Gothic tomb (/>. 89) 
 
 THE TOMB OF HEGESO 
 
 p.%j 
 
ENTER THE GREEK 
 sculpture's handling. The conception which the 
 Greek mind had formed of divinity was itself a 
 sculptor's conception. In discarding the mysterious 
 and obscure and concentrating itself on the com- 
 prehensible and the definable, it was evolving a 
 mental image which could pass without change into 
 terms of sculpture. To His chosen people God was 
 a voice that spoke in thunder and lightning out of 
 the clouds that shrouded Sinai. To the Greek 
 imagination He was in His various manifestations 
 only a little more than humanly perfect. You 
 might put the first conception into rolling Biblical 
 verse such as the Jews were masters of, but it would 
 scarcely go into sculpture ; nor have I ever heard 
 that the Jews could carve. But the second con- 
 ception, the Greek conception, would not only go 
 into sculpture, but in a sense is sculpture ready 
 made. 
 
 And so, too, of what I was just now speaking of, 
 the Greek ideas of death, that crowning mystery of 
 the human lot, which has exercised the imagination 
 of every race that has ever been, and has given 
 birth to so many strange and monstrous and beau- 
 tiful myths and fables and divinations, to so many 
 mystical speculations and gropings in the void, is 
 it not obvious that the bias of the Greek mind, 
 which led it to approach the subject from the 
 mundane standpoint, to fix its attention on its in- 
 telligible aspect, and to ignore or keep in the back- 
 ground its unfathomable mystery, was a bias which 
 favoured the art of sculpture and tended to supply 
 sculpture with appropriate subject-matter ? Who 
 can look on the Greek memorial tablets and doubt 
 
 87 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 
 it ? The motives, the sentimeiUs, which inspire 
 these gravely pathetic figures are invariably of an 
 entirely human and intelligible order, and, being 
 human and intelligible, they are definable, and it is 
 because they are essentially definable that the art 
 of sculpture advances, as it were, to meet and 
 readily expresses and embodies them. 
 
 The truth is that a race distinctively intellectual 
 cannot but express itself through the formative arts. 
 Intellect is the faculty which is most purely human, 
 for it is as distinctly superior and of a higher order 
 to animal intelligence as it is inferior and of a lower 
 order to all that we can conceive of spiritual in- 
 telligence. Now, if we watch intellect at work, 
 if we observe in what manner it arranges and 
 investigates whatever matter it has to deal with, 
 separating like from unlike and disposing its 
 material in distinct masses or groups, we shall 
 perceive that its whole activity depends upon its 
 capacity for definition. Intellect cannot get to 
 work, cannot handle and use its material without 
 identifying and defining its constituent elements. 
 Intellectual appreciation is a process of continued 
 definition, each step forward, each addition of 
 knowledge, being marked by the eradication of 
 irrelevant matter and the identification of the true 
 organism and proportions of the subject under 
 consideration ; each step forward, that is to say, 
 being an approach towards a more complete defini- 
 tion of the subject as it really is. The Greeks, the. 
 first intellectualists and almost the discoverers, as 
 we may say, of that faculty in human nature, were 
 the people who first set about the task of identifying 
 88 
 
The Christian idea uj Duilh. Compare with the classic. The one 
 looking at Death firmly and thoughtfully. The other ^ equally firmly 
 and thoughtfully^ refusing to look at it at all 
 
 A GOTHIC TOMB 
 
ENTER THE GREEK 
 
 and defining with a conscious ardour. Their whole 
 bias and mental endeavour was towards definition. 
 In all they did, in all they wrought, in all they said, this 
 tendency shows itself, but it shows itself, of course, 
 most easily and unrestrainedly in the directions most 
 favourable to its exercise. The art of sculpture is so 
 analagous to the action of intellect that it describes 
 itself in the very same terms. Sculpture, too, is " a 
 process of continual definition," and each step forward 
 in sculpture is ** marked by the eradication of irrele- 
 vant matter and the identification of the organism 
 and proportions of its subject." The sculptor cutting 
 his figure free of the surrounding marble is the 
 very counterpart of the intellectualist developing 
 the construction of his argument. It is, therefore, 
 no wonder that the Greek genius should have found 
 itself in sculpture and should have spoken that 
 language with a kind of native ease and fluency. 
 
 But for us, watching its development in Greek 
 hands, does it not add immensely to the interest 
 and significance of the art to realise of what inward 
 growth it was the visible symptom ? What is 
 happening as the old lifeless dummy figures of 
 Egyptian art stir and stretch themselves and put on 
 reality and move with animation and life ? What 
 is it we are watching ? We are watching the 
 awakening of the Greek mind. In those first tenta- 
 tive experiments that Professor Gardner speaks of 
 in the anxiety accurately to define a hand, a knee- 
 joint, a toe, we catch the first lisping of accents 
 which since then have become the native language 
 of the West. Here you may at leisure examine, 
 here you may touch with your finger, intellect's 
 
 89 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 earliest experiments, its baby pothooks and hangers. 
 It cannot be without a thrill that we, who have 
 lived so long under intellect's guidance and control, 
 regard these first signs of its awakening. A few 
 days ago I was reading in Dr. Sven Hedin's recent 
 book an account of his discovery of the sources of 
 the Indus among the mountain fastnesses of the 
 Himalayas. Following up the tiny brook, that yet 
 bore the name of Indus, the explorer came at last to 
 where the first drops trickled one by one from a 
 well in the hill-side. " Here I stood," he exclaims, 
 "and saw the Indus emerge from the lap of the 
 earth. Here I stood and saw this unpretentious 
 brook wind down the valley, and I thought of the 
 changes it must undergo before it passes between 
 rocky cliffs, singing its roaring song in ever more 
 powerful crescendo, down to the sea at Karachi 
 where steamers load and unload." So when we 
 watch the first feeble trickle of the intellectual 
 current and think of the lordly stream it will grow 
 into, and of the many plains and valleys its waters 
 will one day fertilise — are not its first drops freighted 
 already with the interest of the future that lies 
 before them ? 
 
 Every aspect of Greek life and every activity 
 arising out of that life, testifying as they needs 
 must to the clear-cut, cameo-like quality of Greek 
 thought, illustrate the affinity between the Greek 
 civilisation and the art of sculpture. Out of this 
 mass of material let me choose a single parallel. 
 Literature, as a vehicle for the expression of life, is 
 art's twin. Let us compare for a moment the move- 
 ment set on foot by Myron and continued by 
 90 
 
ENTER THE GREEK 
 
 Phidias with the movement set on foot by iEschylus 
 and continued by Sophocles. For the old hard- 
 and-fast convention of the single actor and the 
 chorus iEschylus substituted a plurality of actors 
 and the dialogue. The almost immediate effect of 
 the change was to infuse into drama a strong 
 human interest — to make it a medium for the 
 delineation of character — in a word, to make it live. 
 The reader need not be reminded to what extent 
 Sophocles developed the same idea, or how, out of 
 it, he wrought the great typical heroic characters 
 which dominate Greek tragedy. The thought of 
 -^schylus was to break with the old convention of 
 chorus and single actor by which the primitive 
 Greek drama had been completely dominated ; or 
 perhaps we should rather say his thought was to 
 extricate the human element in the drama, which 
 had hitherto been entirely eclipsed, and give it 
 scope for development, and that the result of this 
 development was more and more to thrust the 
 conventional element, represented by the chorus, 
 into the background, ^schylus was thinking, no 
 doubt, more of the living human qualities he wished 
 to depict than of the dead conventions his action 
 was dissipating, just as the early sculptors thought 
 more of the realities of the human form which they 
 were striving to represent than of the stereotyped 
 features and attitudes whose sleep of ages they 
 were disturbing. 
 
 In any case, so exactly do the two processes 
 correspond with each other that literature and art 
 at this moment seem inspired by a single endeavour, 
 ^schylus and Myron are contemporaries, the latter 
 
 91 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 some years the younger. They are facing the same 
 problem and solving it in the same way. Both are 
 rescuing their subjects from an old, impossible 
 routine, and infusing into them a hitherto undreamt- 
 of vitality ; and both are effecting this by concen- 
 trating their attention upon life itself and turning 
 their art into a means for the direct representation 
 of life. There have been, no doubt, preceding and 
 earHer experiments. Flickerings of half-conscious- 
 ness have come and gone, and, could we study 
 both subjects with sufficient minuteness, we might 
 probably discover in the primitive Greek drama 
 touches of life about equivalent to similar realistic 
 touches in contemporary sculpture. But though 
 both have had their heralds, to these two for the 
 first time has come the thought, full-orbed, that 
 poetry and art are not to be controlled by any 
 convention, however time-honoured, but must be 
 inspired by what Professor Gardner calls "the 
 direct study and observation of Nature." 
 
 In some ways still more remarkable is the analogy 
 between Phidias and Sophocles, the representatives 
 of the Attic culmination. Born within a year or 
 two of each other, the work of each balances that 
 of the other. The resemblance consists not so 
 much in the fact that both are inspired by the same 
 lofty ideals and the same flush of national self- 
 consciousness, as in the fact that both are in that 
 phase of achievement when the means of expression 
 have attained to the portrayal of what is monu- 
 mental and typical while lacking still that dangerous 
 fluency which is so apt to resort to the delicate and 
 the complex for the exhibition of its dexterity. 
 
 92 
 
• » > a» 
 
 • o »»».*.»», 9, e 
 
 •.,» » • 
 
 3 1 * } 
 
 
 
 t I 
 i.g 
 
 
ENTER THE GREEK 
 
 Accordingly we find in the figures and characters of' 
 both a striking and wonderful similarity. They are 
 identical in their large simplicity, in their powerful 
 rendering of elemental characteristics, in their 
 indifference to all that is accidental or merely 
 subtle. The characters of Sophocles, his Ajax, his 
 (Edipus, his Antigone, in the grandeur of their 
 pose, in their bearing and gesture, match themselves 
 inevitably with the Fates or the Demeter and 
 Persephone of the Parthenon pediment. 
 
 How many moments does history yield so charged 
 with interest as the few years which precede and 
 follow the opening of the fifth century dn Greece ? 
 Ever since then, ever since the day when the rule of 
 reason was explicitly recognised, the tendency of 
 Western progress has always been to advance 
 on intellectual lines. Western science, Western 
 literature. Western politics. Western art, have 
 assumed, under intellect's guidance, that aspect of 
 continuity, coherence and rational development 
 which distinguishes them from the spasmodic, 
 incoherent and entirely unprogressive science, 
 literature, politics and art of the East. And, it may 
 be said, the West has always realised that this was 
 its mission, that the cultivation of the rational 
 faculty and the application of the rational standard 
 were tasks especially committed to its care* The 
 entire classical structure might be submerged and 
 lost to sight, and barbarism and the primitive 
 instincts hold a carnival among the ruins of the 
 civilisation they had laid waste ; yet when those 
 passions were laid and that tumult had subsided, 
 the whisper that made itself heard across the ages 
 
 93 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 '^of riot, the whisper that said ''think," came like an 
 exhortation and a reminder. Men gave ear to it, 
 and the pack of European nations, like hounds 
 after a check, settled down once more to the line of 
 rational and intellectual progress. He must possess 
 but a weak historical sense whose interest and 
 attention are not forcibly drawn to the moment 
 when the new motive was first let loose ; and surely 
 every means which tends to illustrate and make 
 clear its nature and the character of the revolution 
 it introduced must have a high claim on our regard. 
 Let the reader but dwell for a moment on the gulf 
 which separates the ancient pre-intellectual civilisa- 
 tions of Egypt and Assyria from that in which we 
 live. He will see that an inanimate, unyielding 
 routine, of which the essential condition is immo- 
 bility, has given place to an animated progressive 
 movement, of which the essential condition is 
 constant development and change. There is the 
 immobility of death ; here the mobility of life. 
 But the self-same difference is just as apparent 
 between these old civilisations and that of Greece. 
 The transition from petrifaction to warm life comes 
 at the beginning of the Greek era. It is with this 
 moment of transition, this moment of awakening, 
 as, in so far as the mind is concerned, it may literally 
 be termed, that we, as we study the beginnings of 
 Greek sculpture, are concerned. Here before our 
 very eyes is the awakening ; here are the figures of 
 men actually struggling into reality and life as the 
 new intellectual faculty operates upon them. It is, 
 in all truth, a moment of birth, comparable almost 
 to the moment, as the great Florentine has con- 
 
 94 
 
ENTER THE GREEK 
 ceived it, when the first of our race felt the touch of 
 the divine finger and opened heavy eyes in which 
 the light of intelligence and recognition for the first 
 time was kindled. 
 
 This surely is a spectacle of some significance ; 
 yet even this is but half the interest derivable from 
 Greek sculpture by associating it with the life it 
 grew out of. For, if it reveals the dawn of intellect, 
 that art reveals also the nature, the proportions, 
 and, by-and-by, the limitations of intellect. Sculp- 
 ture in Greek hands is a definition and, Hke all 
 definitions, a criticism of intellectualism. In defining 
 what intellectualism is it indicates what it is not. 
 "Though in many respects the ancients are far 
 above us, yet," writes Matthew Arnold, "there is 
 something which we demand that they can never 
 give." There it is ! In spite of its quality of 
 sculptured clearness — nay, to speak rightly, because 
 of its quality of sculptured clearness— Greek thought 
 has proved in the long run not adequate to human 
 needs. Its very perfection has been its undoing. 
 Purity of form denotes exactitude of definition, and 
 exact definition involves the idea of limitation. 
 The consciousness of limitation, in spite of an ever- 
 present beauty and harmony, is, as we study Greek 
 literature and art, never far from us. If w^e dwell 
 on that sense of limitation we shall, perhaps, find 
 that it is produced by the inherent tendency of the 
 Greek mind to rely on one set of faculties only, on 
 the rational and intellectual faculties, that is to say, 
 and to ignore as much as possible that other side of 
 the mind whose subject-matter is the spiritual, and 
 whose mode of procedure is not analysis and 
 
 95 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 
 definition, but pure receptivity and the adoption of 
 an attitude of passive contemplation. The gleams 
 of spiritual vision thus accorded are, and are bound 
 to be because of the order of ideas they deal with, 
 vague and indefinite ; and doubtless the exquisite 
 lucidity of Greek thought, together with its counter- 
 part, the purity of form of Greek sculpture, are 
 largely due to their successful exclusion. Neverthe- 
 less, these gleams of illumination or inward vision 
 constitute not the least precious part of our 
 enlightenment, and the faculties which receive such 
 promptings are not among those which we can afford 
 permanently to ignore. This we have come to per- 
 ceive more clearly than the Greeks could do. This 
 inward spiritual prompting, with its accompanying 
 sense of the infinite and the indefinite, is, I suppose, 
 that "something" over and above intellectualism 
 which we demand and which the ancients "can 
 never give." In this sense it is that Greek sculpture 
 yields us not the value only, but the limits to the 
 value, of Greek ideas. Its clear-cut outlines are the 
 boundaries of the Greek intelligence. 
 
 I hope in a later chapter to follow up these 
 remarks on the rise of Greek sculpture with some 
 observations on its decline during what is known as 
 the Hellenistic period, and on the later revival of 
 the art at the time of the Renaissance. In both 
 these periods there are to be found signs of conflict 
 and struggle in the sculpture itself, due, as it seems 
 to me, to the influence of certain ideas which did 
 not admit of being translated into exact forms. 
 These signs of conflict and struggle shed a very 
 interesting light on Greek sculpture itself, and, I 
 
 96 
 
ENTER THE GREEK 
 
 think, bear out what I have said in regard to its 
 cause of origin and the nature of its Hmitations. 
 One concluding point I would here emphasise : It 
 was stated at the beginning of this chapter, what is 
 common knowledge, that modern art criticism is 
 usually conducted as a special study confined to art 
 alone, and that, while recognising the artistic or 
 aesthetic value of art, it very seldom takes the trouble 
 to look for any human and historical interest which 
 it may contain. In these pages a rough attempt has 
 been made to regard sculpture, not as disjoined 
 from, but as united to life, and as deriving its main 
 interest and significance from life. The passage 
 from cast-iron Egyptian convention to Greek 
 warmth and mobility has been viewed as the 
 transition from intellectual stagnation and atrophy 
 to intellectual initiative and vitality. Will the 
 reader, the next time he visits the British Museum, 
 take this idea, such as it is, with him and there eke 
 out its imperfections ? If he will do this, and if, as 
 he looks at the dissolving stiffness and slow awaken- 
 ing of the sculptured figures before him, he will turn 
 back into Greek history and observe in Greek poetry 
 the same life-giving process taking effect, and in 
 Greek politics and science and philosophy kindred 
 signs of a growing consciousness of the real nature 
 of things, he will, I cannot help thinking, be inclined 
 to agree that the representation here given by art of 
 a great movement in the development of thought is 
 unapproached for vividness and dramatic force. 
 Such a representation drives into us the meaning of 
 that movement as nothing else can. And so I say 
 thatj strip art of that interest and you strip it of a 
 
 o 97 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 large share of its hold upon our attention. Many 
 books on sculpture have appeared quite recently. 
 On my own table, besides Professor Gardner's book, 
 I happen to have Lord Balcarres' work on the 
 Italian sculptors, a book of short studies by Mr. Hill, 
 a " Life of Michael Angelo " by Mr. Gerald Davies, 
 and an important work on Florentine sculpture by 
 Professor Bode, These books are valuable and are 
 read by people who are interested in artistic theories 
 and solutions, but they do not appeal to the far 
 wider public which is interested in history and in 
 life. Yet they might easily be made to do so. 
 They would not, by linking art to the ideas which 
 gave it tirth, lose anything of their aesthetic signi- 
 ficance — nay, they would probably gain in that 
 province too ; but apart from that they would 
 appeal to numbers of readers for the sake of their 
 interpretation of that living interest which art always 
 in greater or less degree contains, though not often 
 does it contain so much of it as in the case of Greek 
 sculpture. 
 
 98 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 WHAT ART MEANT TO THE GREEKS 
 
 Greek and Gothic art compared : Gothic architecture a 
 picture of contemporary life : Aloofness of the Doric temple 
 from such life : What hold had it on Greek hfe? : The 
 aesthetic sense as a source of ideas : Proportion, harmony, 
 unity at once aesthetic and ethical principles : Similarity 
 between the eye and the mind : Hence possibility of appeal- 
 ing to the mind through the eye — e.g. an image of harmony, 
 unity, &c., presented to the eye will stimulate a mental recog- 
 nition of those principles : Use the Greeks made of this 
 thought : Doric architecture an embodiment of the ethica* 
 conceptions which governed Greek life 
 
 IN that excellent book of his, " The Classical Heri- 
 tage of the Middle Ages," Mr. Taylor points out 
 that " the Greeks reached their ethical conceptions 
 in part through philosophical speculation . . . and 
 in part through their sense and understanding of 
 the beautiful ; that is," as he proceeds to explain, 
 "through the aesthetic and artistic side of their 
 nature, which sought everywhere harmony, fitness 
 and proportion," The first statement presents no 
 difficulties. Philosophical speculation is just as 
 much a way to knowledge now as it was in the 
 days of the Greeks. But the second is much harder 
 to understand. How are ethical conceptions, how 
 are ideas of what is right and wrong in conduct, to 
 be derived from the haesttice sense and the under- 
 standing of the beautiful? The very thought of an 
 ethical significance in the word '^ beauty " has almost 
 
 99 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 died out. It lasted, indeed, far on into Christian 
 times. Early Christian philosophy, especially that 
 which emanated from Alexandria and was nourished 
 on Greek ideas, habitually deals with beauty as 
 synonymous with truth. But that meaning of the 
 w^ord has evaporated. No one now would think of 
 describing a search after truth as a search after the 
 beautiful. 
 
 It is pretty safe to say, unless the reader has 
 derived it from Greek art, that the notion of the 
 aesthetic sense originating and being a source of 
 ethical conceptions will scarcely have occurred to 
 him. Other races have employed art as a vehicle 
 to express ideas and convictions previously arrived 
 at, and it has been in proportion as these precon- 
 ceived ideas have been strongly and decidedly held 
 that the art embodying them has assumed a definite 
 and significant character. But to express ideas, 
 however vigorously, is not to initiate them. 
 
 The distinction between an art which initiates 
 and an art which expresses ideas is perfectly 
 exemplified in the difference between Greek and 
 Gothic architecture. A Gothic cathedral is the 
 finest and most complete presentment remaining to 
 us of the life and thought of the mediaeval age. It 
 is full of the exalted energy which was the master 
 sentiment of the epoch of the Crusades, and it is 
 full of the extraordinary democratic vigour of a 
 time when all classes of the people, banded in their 
 arts and guilds, were animated by a virile pride in 
 their labour and a consciousness of the value of it. 
 It is the keynote of mediaeval life that the whole of 
 it, down to the commonest industries and poorest 
 
 100 
 
WHAT ART MEANT TO THE G-feEEkS '' 
 acts of toil, was inspired by a vigorous spirit of 
 dignity and independence ; and all this was poured 
 into mediaeval art. To us, of the same race and 
 blood as its builders, this art still appeals as it did 
 to them. It expresses us as it expressed them. If 
 it is not strictly artistic in the academic sense, if it 
 is not laid out and proportioned by abstract rule, it 
 is none the worse for that. We are not going to 
 art for a justification of what stirs our hearts so 
 deeply. The Gothic cathedrals, Mr. Lethaby de- 
 clares, "are more than art." He means that their 
 appeal as an interpretation of life, their eloquent 
 appeal to the racial sentiments and emotions we 
 still share in, is of itself their justification, and is 
 a better justification than adherence to aesthetic 
 laws, which, he admits, were ignored by their 
 originators. 
 
 Perhaps he is right. But, while we extol Gothic 
 for what it gives us, let us also note the one small, 
 and in our eyes insignificant, thing which it fails to 
 give. Gothic art has in it no power to initiate 
 ideas, nor was it ever used or regarded as if it 
 possessed any such power. It was used to record 
 ideas. For this its contemporaries loved and valued 
 it, because it uttered their lives for them ; and for 
 this we, being of the same national stock and sym- 
 pathies, love and value it still. But this was not 
 the Greek notion of the function of art at all. So 
 little so that there is not a single merit in Gothic 
 which, in Greek eyes, would not have been a 
 demerit. There is not an end striven for which, 
 in Greek eyes, it would not have been degradation 
 to attain. Between the two there is no question of 
 
 lOI 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 
 degree of excellence, or greater and less perfection. 
 The question is one of the whole end and aim of 
 art and its intended use to mankind. A Greek, 
 reared in his own race's ideals in matters of art, 
 would, if he were brought into the presence of 
 Gothic, assuredly tell us, not that this style was in 
 certain respects different and, in his own estima- 
 tion, probably inferior to his own, but that it was 
 not art at all ; that it was not the creation of the 
 artistic faculty, and did not serve the purposes 
 which art was intended to serve. And if we were 
 to press into his meaning, he would explain that 
 this art was worthless for the very reason that we 
 love it so, because it is merely a record of life. 
 Yes, he would insist, an art which aspires only to 
 reflect the life of its time, with all its fugitive daily 
 interests, which is swayed by human impulses and 
 caprices, and takes its colour from the whims and 
 fantasies of the moment, is an art which has become 
 life's slave. It offers no independent testimony of 
 its own, for it does not act according to its own 
 volition. It does not obey its own law^s, for it does 
 not even know that it has laws of its own to obey. 
 It does what life tells it to do, and says what life 
 tells it to say. We can imagine our visitor's grow- 
 ing perplexity and concern in this world of Gothic, 
 and how at last he would break out almost incre- 
 dulously : " Do you really believe, then, that the 
 aesthetic sense was given us merely to record our 
 own petty whims and impulses ? If so, you ignore 
 the nature of the faculty and the part it should play 
 in human life. What is that part ? It is to illumine 
 life, not to record it ; to be a guide, not an echo ; 
 102 
 
WHAT ART MEANT TO THE GREEKS 
 
 to be a witness to ethical truths, not indeed by 
 explaining their truth, but by demonstrating their 
 beauty." 
 
 This would be the Greek criticism, and for two 
 reasons we should give it a hearing. In the first 
 place, the \ most cursory acquaintance with the 
 Doric style reveals in the Greek view a remarkable 
 consistency. That which first strikes a Northern 
 eye in regard to Doric is its lack of all interest and 
 significance derived from contemporary life. It is 
 true the subjects of its sculptured groups, when 
 such existed, were mostly taken from Greek history 
 or myth. But these representations were at the 
 most racial, never local. Such vague legends as 
 the wars of Centaurs or Amazons are not impres- 
 sions of life in the Gothic sense. Their interest is 
 ideal and remote, not actual and immediate. More- 
 over, these sculptures are independent of the 
 structure, which is perfect without them ; their 
 appearance was optional, and in more cases than 
 not they were dispensed with altogether. Nothing 
 in the Gothic sense personal, nothing of local or 
 temporary interest, finds a place in the Doric 
 temple. It is detached. For centuries the type 
 does not vary. Cities rise and fall, generations 
 come and go, but this characteristic achievement of 
 the Greek genius scarcely changes by the inflection 
 of a line. Aloof from human life, the accidents and 
 passions of men's lot do not touch it. Whatever 
 may have been its attraction for the race which 
 evolved it, it was not the Gothic attraction. It was 
 not the attraction of an art which expresses the life 
 of its own time and place. Doric architecture 
 
 103 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 knows nothing of the life going on round it. It 
 utterly ignores that life. 
 
 And yet — and this is the second consideration I 
 spoke of — the reality of the attraction exercised by 
 the Doric style, the depth and genuineness of the 
 love which the Greeks felt for their temples, admit 
 of no doubt whatever. The most commanding site 
 in or near the city was the temple's unquestioned 
 perquisite, and no Greek settlement or colony con- 
 sidered itself launched and fit to live its own life 
 until one at least, but more likely a whole group, of 
 these stately edifices surveyed its fortunes from the 
 neighbouring eminence. The temple, we are bound 
 to admit it, filled quite as big a place in Greek life as 
 the Gothic cathedral did in mediaeval life. The 
 Greeks got something out of these buildings, and 
 something, in their eyes, of value. It was not what 
 our forefathers got out of Gothic. What, then, 
 was it ? 
 
 The question drives us back again upon the Greek 
 notion of the function of art, that it was to be a 
 source of ideas not a record of them. In what 
 way can art be a source of ideas ? Whatever ideas 
 are contained in a work of art, must they not have 
 originated in the mind of the artist, and, in that 
 sense, must not the work of art be a record rather 
 than a source of ideas ? If this be so the case for 
 an artistic origination of ethical conceptions falls to 
 the ground. On the other hand, if we still uphold 
 that case, to what are we driven ? Ideas are mental 
 property. We know nothing of ideas other than 
 the mind's ideas. If, therefore, a work of art con- 
 tains ideas, but ideas not derived from the mind, it 
 104 
 
WHAT ART MEANT TO THE GREEKS 
 
 must mean that those ideas were infused into it, 
 not in the guise of ideas and not under the mind's 
 prompting. They were infused as something other 
 than ideas, and at the instigation of a sense or 
 faculty other than the mind, and then, somehow 
 or other, they hatched out into ideas, or ethical 
 conceptions, later. This may sound a somewhat 
 extravagant theory, nevertheless, once we entertain 
 the claim of art to be a source of ideas, to this 
 conclusion we are inevitably driven. We are driven 
 to it, and when we apply it to Greek art we find its 
 extravagance diminish. Nay, we even find it some- 
 thing in the nature of a solution. It is the case, 
 when we come to examine into the matter, that a 
 Doric temple is charged and saturated with ideas 
 which were not put into it as ideas at all, and which 
 were not supplied by the mind but by another 
 faculty. 
 
 Fergusson, the sanest, after all, of our architec- 
 tural critics, has the remark that the sensitiveness of 
 vision of the Greeks was equivalent to a "new 
 sense," the potentialities and limitations of which 
 are to our duller perception not very apparent. 
 The remark was occasioned by the discoveries 
 brought to light by the elaborate measurements of 
 the Parthenon undertaken by Penrose about sixty 
 years ago. These measurements pointed to a 
 state of things quite unsuspected. There could, 
 apparently, be no more obvious and simple plan 
 of construction than that of a Doric temple. A 
 horizontal weight resting on vertical supports is the 
 most primitive of architectural ideas, and the temple 
 is really nothing else. The traveller in Greece or 
 
 105 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 Sicily, coming upon these gaunt colonnades, is 
 inclined to wonder at the pleasing effects obtained 
 by such simplicity, but does not question the sim- 
 plicity itself. Yet this simplicity is but a mask. 
 Beneath it lurks a subtlety to which there is nothing 
 comparable in the art of any other people. Pen- 
 rose's measurements revealed the fact that the 
 temple in all its parts and proportions was under 
 the influence of certain inflections which infuse 
 a kind of mystery into the most matter-of-fact 
 appearances, and which meet all attempts at sum- 
 mary description with a gentle contradiction. 
 Nothing seems more evident, for instance, than 
 that the peristyle, as the parallelogram of columns 
 forming the temple's outer wall is called, is of 
 mathematically regular construction. It is com- 
 posed of so many vertical shafts, of equal size and 
 height, standing equidistant from each other on 
 a flat platform, and supporting a vertical-faced 
 entablature of horizontal extension. Scientific 
 analysis, however, negatives every one of these 
 statements. These columns, it assures us, do not 
 stand vertically, but imperceptibly lean inwards. 
 They are not quite of equal height, nor of exactly 
 the same dimensions, for the angle-shafts and their 
 next-door neighbours are slightly thicker than the 
 rest. They do not stand equidistant, for in each 
 colonnade the gaps are a little reduced as the 
 corner is approached. They do not rise out of a 
 flat platform ; the platform is in a very slight degree 
 curved, or cushion-shaped. Neither is the en- 
 tablature either upright or of horizontal extension. 
 It leans outwards a trifle, and is therefore not 
 1 06 
 
WHAT ART MEANT TO THE GREEKS 
 vertical ; and it is slightly curved, like the platform 
 and is therefore not horizontal. 
 
 Baffled in every way, and headed off at every 
 turn, the spectator feels like some traveller in mid- 
 desert, who, riding down to a blue sheet of water 
 under an overhanging rock, finds to his astonish- 
 ment the water recoil from him and his lake 
 dissolve in air. Nothing in this strange art is what 
 it seems to be. The most obvious facts turn out 
 not to be facts at all. And the closer we carry our 
 examination the more the mystery spreads and 
 deepens. It infects the whole temple. It touches 
 and alters cornice and frieze, architrave and abacus, 
 capital and column. It reaches to the foundations 
 and even to the flights of steps which form the 
 approach to the building. There is not a single 
 feature, nay, there is not a single stone, in the 
 structure which is unconscious of this mystery or 
 which is in itself the mechanically regular and 
 rectilinear object it seems to be. In some slight 
 and entirely unnoticeable degree the mechanical 
 regularity of every stone is deflected, the deflection 
 representing that particular stone's share in the 
 curve or inclination of the feature of which it 
 forms part. 
 
 Now I must not here dwell on these mysterious 
 inflections. I must leave them to the reader's con- 
 sideration. He must remember that we are dealing 
 with huge structural forms, with columns thirty to 
 forty feet high and from six to seven feet in 
 diameter at the base, and with a masonry often 
 composed of blocks of stone or marble twelve to 
 fourteen feet in length. He must remember that 
 
 507 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 
 the inflections applied to these masses are calculated 
 in minute fractions of inches, and are as a rule to 
 average sight quite imperceptible ; and he must 
 also remember that an infinity of labour and skill 
 and expense went to the carrying out of these in- 
 flections. If he allows due weight to these con- 
 siderations he will agree that such alterations as 
 Ihese constitute a very mysterious phenomenon in 
 the history of art, and one which challenges a closer 
 scrutiny. How are they to be explained ? After a 
 good deal of discussion it appears that the ex- 
 planation of one particular alteration is the ex- 
 planation of all. It had long been observed that a 
 long horizontal line, seen full face, though in itself 
 perfectly straight, appears to the eye to sag in the 
 middle and become slightly concave. The fact that 
 the Doric stylobate or platform was rounded was 
 easily apparent to any one who happened, instead 
 of looking at it, to look along its edge from either 
 angle. It was, therefore, readily conjectured that 
 this Greek device of adding actual convexity was 
 designed to obviate an apparent concavity. It w^as 
 an extremely difficult and complicated undertaking, 
 for the Greeks made no allowances in the joint- 
 ing of their masonry, which was of an exquisite 
 accuracy and fineness, but cut each stone as a 
 section of a flat arch. Moreover, the difficulty was 
 greatly increased by the necessity of fusing together 
 the end curves and side curves of the platform, 
 much as the curves of a vault are dovetailed 
 together, only the present vault is confined to a rise 
 of about three inches in a span of two hundred 
 feet. Still the necessary labour was undertaken, 
 io8 
 
WHAT ART I^vIEANT TO THE GREEKS 
 and undertaken, obviously enough, for the sake of 
 correcting a carefully analysed optical illusion. 
 
 As closer investigation disclosed the presence of 
 more of these delicate inflections, they, too, were 
 found amenable to the same interpretation. It is 
 a truth admitting of simple verification that light 
 masses against a dark background appear larger, 
 and dark masses against a light background smaller 
 than they really are, light possessing a power of 
 encroaching upon or eating away darkness. Down 
 the greater part of the length of a Doric colonnade 
 the columns tell as light masses against the shaded 
 cella wall behind them. The peristyle, however, 
 being of greater length than the cella, its corner 
 columns stand clear, and the gaps between them 
 are empty space. Here, then, it is the gaps, or 
 background, that tell as light masses and the 
 columns as dark masses. These observations gave 
 the clue to the changes wrought in the peristyle. 
 Greek vision had noted the illusion and calculated 
 its extent. As soon as the gaps became the light 
 masses they were slightly diminished, and as soon 
 as the columns became the dark masses they were 
 slightly increased. So with the other alterations 
 we were speaking of : they are all directed to 
 the same end. Probably the most far-reaching 
 alteration effected is the inclination inwards of all 
 the vertical lines of the temple so as to form 
 the base of a vast pyramid, or spire, of which the 
 base alone is visible. I must leave the reader to 
 consider for himself what must be the difficulty, 
 in the inclination, say, to the extent of two inches 
 of a column thirty feet high, of working out the 
 
 109 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 necessary alteration in each separate drum of 
 which the column is composed. He will find the 
 addition in skill, labour and expense incalculable. 
 If he would know why all this labour was under- 
 taken, why a Doric temple is built in the semblance 
 of a truncated spire, let him observe the apparent 
 shape of any plain square-headed tower he may 
 chance to see outlined against the sky. He will 
 observe that the ascending lines of the structure 
 apparently diverge as they mount, giving the tower 
 a distinctly top-heavy effect. This, again, is a law 
 of optics. Parallel vertical lines appear to diverge, 
 and this illusion it is which the Greeks have com- 
 bated in their pyramidal-shaped temples. 
 
 So far, then, we find the Doric temple penetrated 
 and, so to speak, suffused with slight imperceptible 
 inflections of line and contour, involving incalcul- 
 able extra trouble and expense in the building, and 
 w^e find that the object and aim of all these ex- 
 pedients is to adapt the outlines of the temple more 
 perfectly and accurately to the laws of sight. The 
 reader will observe that sight is the governing factor 
 in the undertaking. The real shape of the thing did 
 not matt(T ; it was the apparent shape that mattered. 
 Ec lal columns which appeared unequal would be 
 made unequal to appear equal. A level floor which 
 looked unlevel would be made unlevel to appear 
 level. Vertical lines which appeared to slant w^ould 
 be made to slant that they might appear vertical. 
 Among other races the eye has been called upon to 
 adjust itself to the facts. With the Greeks the facts 
 are, with infinite pains, adjusted to the eye. We 
 get a notion, then, of what Fergusson meant when 
 IIO 
 
WHAT ART MEANT TO THE GREEKS 
 he spoke of Greek sight as an added sense. It has 
 that air. To turn from the work of other races to 
 Greek work is to find the sense of sight placed in a 
 position of authority it has never before or since 
 occupied, and its most subtle predilections analysed 
 and provided for in a way utterly incomprehensible 
 to any other people. It is really hke coming under 
 the influence and watching the operations of a new 
 sense. 
 
 These are facts interesting, perhaps, or at least 
 curious, in themselves. But their chief importance 
 is more in what they indicate than in what they are. 
 It will occur to the reader readily enough that a gift 
 of sight so sensitive as that which we have been 
 studying is scarcely likely to confine its energies to 
 the correction of optical delusions. If a man has a 
 singularly keen appreciation of the laws of sight in 
 one set of circumstances, it may be supposed he 
 will have a similar appreciation of them in other 
 circumstances. If he has made a profound study of 
 the likes and dislikes of the eye, it is probable his 
 knowledge will stand by him equally in his creative 
 as in his corrective work. As a matter of fact, the 
 whole design and detail of a Doric temple are con- 
 trolled by that sense which the Greeks had wrought 
 to such a pitch of refinement. There is, for example, 
 nothing in art like the Greek knowledge of propor- 
 tion. We talk easily but vaguely of a fafade or an 
 interior being " exquisitely proportioned," but the 
 word in our mouths is so indefinite that we scarcely 
 know what we mean by it. , All that most architects 
 aim at in this matter is to avoid falling into flagrant 
 error on one side or the other. But the Greeks 
 
 III 
 
THE WORKS OF IMAN 
 aimed at a positive mark, the tiny buirs-eye of 
 absolute perfection. We know when we hold out 
 a book or other weight at arm's-length that the 
 strength we exert has to be exactly proportioned to 
 the weight supported. The slightest superfluity of 
 strength, and up goes the book. The slightest 
 superfluity of weight and down goes our arm. 
 Support and burden must be adjusted in a point of 
 absolute agreement. It was so the Greeks thought 
 of the law of proportion. The adjustment between 
 the great horizontal entablature and the colonnades 
 of massive shafts is the single but tremendous 
 structural opportunity of the Doric temple. The 
 writer remembers still, as the result of many a 
 month's study of the temples of Greece and Sicily, 
 the gradual revelation to his consciousness of the 
 possibilities of the law of proportion as exemplified 
 in Doric architecture. The forms used are them- 
 selves expressive in the highest degree. The vast 
 entablature, a burden for Titans, built of great 
 blocks that stretch from centre to centre of the 
 shafts, is, despite its colossal dimensions, invested 
 with a certain fascinating delicacy from the sharp- 
 ness of its clear-cut outlines and the incisive edges 
 of its straight mouldings. The perfection of its 
 definition invites the eye to study with exactitude its 
 relation to the supporting shafts. And these, in 
 serried range, elastic, vigorous, while they carry 
 their burden with buoyant ease, are themselves 
 ennobled by its magnitude and the gravity of the 
 duty they perform. Their strength is nobly exercised, 
 yet not taxed. Never has the profound structural 
 idea of the relation of the means to the end received 
 
 112 
 
VVHAT ART MEANT TO THE GREEKS 
 such eloquent expression as here. Every shed- 
 builder who lays a stick on two uprights has 
 mastered the structural principle of a Doric temple ; 
 but the Greeks alone have comprehended the inward 
 significance of the act. They alone have perceived 
 how much pleasure might be called forth by perfectly 
 defined strength exerted upon an exactly adequate 
 burden. 
 
 Yet in this we are but observing a further 
 application and use of that sense which the Greeks 
 cultivated so assiduously. The same extraordinary 
 keenness and subtlety of vision which prompted 
 them to elaborate invisible slants and curves with so 
 much pains enables them to strike that perfect 
 balance in proportion which grows upon the eye 
 with so fascinating a power. And when we further 
 study the detailed arrangement of the building it is 
 but to observe a still further application of the same 
 faculty. If illustrations were permitted it would be 
 easy to show by what means the sight of the 
 spectator is guided down the long length of the 
 structure ; how effectively the powerful line of 
 the cornice controls the eye's energy, bringing 
 the entire building within easy sweep of a single 
 glance ; and yet at the same time how equally 
 effectively, where checks are necessary, checks are 
 imposed, and by what subtle means the eye's course 
 is, as we approach the temple, arrested at intervals 
 and transferred to the frieze beneath, there to be still 
 further penned in and concentrated on the groups 
 of the metopes by the short heavy lines of the 
 vertical triglyphs. These, however, are expedients 
 which require illustrating if they are to be made 
 
 H 113 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 
 clear. Let us endeavour to keep to characteristics 
 familiar to the general reader. One such character- 
 istic there is which belongs to the Doric temple not 
 more than it belongs to all Greek artistic work, a 
 characteristic which all will recognise. I mean the 
 Greek love of simplicity and smooth surfaces, the 
 Greek hatred of redundancy, complication and 
 loaded ornament. It is probable that this, in almost 
 every one's estimation, constitutes the distinguishing 
 mark of Greek art. The word "Greek" to most 
 people, and very rightly, stands primarily for 
 lucidity ; and this lucidity is arrived at by the 
 rigorous lopping away of every line and particle of 
 ornament the presence of which is not essential. I 
 have often thought that a useful way of impressing 
 upon children the methods pursued by the Greeks 
 would be to teach them that Greek art is based on 
 subtraction, and other art on addition. The 
 instinct of most people, when they desire to 
 beautify, is to spare neither labour nor expense, 
 to be lavish of workmanship, to go on adding. 
 The result is sure to be acclaimed. Surfaces loaded 
 with decoration are said to be " enriched " with 
 sculpture. Carving so intricate as to be indecipher- 
 able is said to be " lace-like." Those entangled and 
 nerveless designs which the Arabs, destitute as they 
 are of all sense for form or construction, love to 
 plaster over their walls and ceilings, continue to 
 impose on us owing to their very superfluity of 
 adornment. No matter to what time or race we 
 turn, from the little finicking incisions which cover 
 Egyptian tombs and temples, down to the ponderous 
 decoration of our modern Government buildings, 
 114 
 
WHAT ART MEANT TO THE GREEKS 
 the same idea prevails. Every buttress must be 
 honeycombed with niches, every spandril stuffed 
 with figures. They have no use except for pigeons 
 to build among. Practically they are invisible. 
 Down the facade of the new Victoria and Albert 
 Museum are dozens upon dozens of carved figures 
 which no mortal eye has ever seen or ever will see. 
 They are there not because they count for anything 
 to the eye but because addition is the rule of our 
 art. 
 
 To what extent it is so, a comparison with Greek 
 work indicates. The Greeks made a curiously exact 
 study of the value of smooth spaces and employed 
 to the full the significance which smooth spaces 
 alone can confer, and the resulting refinement of 
 their work has become, as I have said, its best-known 
 characteristic. At the same time let the reader 
 observe that it is a characteristic arising inevitably 
 out of a study of the laws of sight. We can easily 
 satisfy ourselves, by all our eyes look at and avoid, 
 that there is nothing they so dislike and shrink 
 from as complication. They cannot abide moving 
 along lines which are apt to become entangled and 
 involved, nor will they rest for a moment on any 
 surface where the ornament is messy and over- 
 crowded. Redundancy satiates the eye and actually 
 deprives it of its power of seeing. Hence the aim 
 of the Greek artist being so to place his decoration 
 that every touch will tell with full effect, he naturally 
 employs as a background a liberal allowance of 
 smooth surface, for smooth surface collects, so to 
 speak, the attention, and represents the eye's power 
 of seeing. In many everyday ways we act on the 
 
 115 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 same knowledge. We know that an object placed 
 in a crowd is overlooked, while one standing alone 
 is, as we call it, conspicuous. But here, again, the 
 effectiveness of the work of the Greeks appears in 
 the delicacy and nicety with which they apportion 
 space to ornament. For they seem to know exactly 
 how much attention any given space can collect, 
 and therefore precisely the amount of ornament 
 which is required to satisfy without fatiguing it ; the 
 result of this discrimination being that each touch 
 of theirs shows up unencumbered, with a kind of 
 starry distinctness, reminding one of that thought 
 of Wordsworth's : 
 
 '' Fair as a star, when only one 
 Is shining in the sky." 
 
 What, then, I would impress upon the reader with 
 regard to a Doric temple is this, that not only are 
 its main features and outlines subtly rounded, slanted 
 and curved, in obedience to the eye's requirements, 
 but that the method of its arrangement, its severe 
 simplicity, and the strict and calculated parsimony of 
 its ornament are appraised by the same standard. 
 The stranger may think what he will about Doric 
 architecture, but there is one fact about it which he 
 cannot alter. As sure as one object on a table is 
 more conspicuous than one among fifty, as sure as 
 a tree upon the hill-top stands out more clearly than 
 when nestling in the valley, as sure as horizontal 
 lines are easier for sight to travel on than vertical 
 ones, and left to right a more natural motion for it 
 than right to left : in short, as surely as sight has 
 laws of its own over w^hich we have no control and 
 ii6 
 
WHAT ART MEANT TO THE GREEKS 
 which guide its every movement, so certain is it 
 that Doric architecture, having alone subscribed to 
 those laws and placed itself entirely under their 
 jurisdiction, is alone in the pleasure it affords to the 
 faculty of sight. 
 
 Here, then, we find such a source as we are in 
 search of. We said, to start with, that a Doric 
 temple is saturated with ideas which were not put 
 into it as ideas at all, and which were furnished by 
 a faculty other than the mind. That other faculty 
 is the faculty of sight, and the motives it suggests, it 
 suggests not as ideas but as adaptations of form and 
 surface to the requirements of the eye. But though 
 not put in as ideas, these motives can be taken out 
 as ideas. It is, indeed, difficult to speak for a 
 moment of Doric construction without being led 
 insensibly into the language of ethics, for the sug- 
 gestions of the eye, which that construction every- 
 where obeys, turn of their own accord into ethical 
 ideas directly they take shape in stone. Certain 
 words and phrases, as we know, have the same 
 tendency. Design, proportion, harmony, the sub- 
 ordination of the parts to the whole, are such 
 words and phrases. They] apply to art and ethics 
 both, and are equally used of things relating to the 
 eye and the mind. It only, therefore, needs that 
 these principles should, in the artistic sphere, be 
 enforced to the point at which we become sensuously 
 conscious of their influence, and we shall at the 
 same time become mentally conscious of it also. 
 Let proportion, let design be carried to a point of 
 perfection before our eyes, and the same act of 
 consciousness which reveals the apparent and visual 
 
 117 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 
 significance of the principle reveals also and carries 
 deep into our minds and hearts its intellectual and 
 ethical significance. A moment ago, in speaking of 
 Doric proportions, we slipped unconsciously into 
 the ethical view of the matter, and spoke of. the 
 ennobling effect of their duties and a strength 
 adequately exercised yet not taxed. For all who 
 have laid themselves open to the influence of Doric 
 it will be impossible to separate this view from 
 the purely aesthetic Visual perception passes into 
 ethical conception. The two are fused together. 
 We think with the eye and see with the mind. A 
 new certitude suffuses our being. What was only 
 thought to be true is now seen to be true. 
 
 Let me emphasise what is the crux of the whole 
 matter. It is the general supposition, I believe, that 
 the eye moves along as evenly and indifferently as 
 the shadows and sunbeams which chase each other 
 across a landscape, accepting as impartially all that 
 comes in its way ; and that, when it rests, it rests as 
 easily on one thing as another. Nothing could be 
 further from the truth. The movement of the eye 
 is not uniform and even ; it consists of a series of 
 leaps from one thing to another, and in proportion 
 to the speed of the sweep of the glance is the 
 lightning swiftness of the short leaps which com- 
 pose it. Yet every single leap is taken by the eye 
 for certain reasons of its own. Like a goat, it picks 
 its path as it goes, selecting this, avoiding that, now 
 hesitating, now turning aside, now springing boldly 
 forward. Its course is a zigzag one, but for each 
 turn it has motives ; and if we were to go into the 
 matter carefully, taking our eyes slowly backwards 
 ii8 
 
WHAT ART MEANT TO THE GREEKS 
 and forwards over the same line of country, we 
 should find that not only would they repeat their 
 leaps and turns with the most perfect regularity, 
 but that the eyes of all other people whom we might 
 choose to consult would behave in exactly the same 
 manner. Similarly, in regard to resting-places, we 
 should find that our eyes had likes and dislikes 
 which are quite outside our own control ; that 
 they are particular upon what they lodge, and 
 will not remain more than a moment at rest if 
 surrounding objects either disquiet them or attract 
 them in some other direction. In this respect, too, 
 there will be the same uniformity, and the eyes of 
 all men will be influenced in a similar way. 
 
 But these laws of sight, being fixed, must also be 
 definable, and if the reader will attempt the task of 
 defining his own eyes' likes and dislikes, he will 
 find himself using such words as harmony, articu- 
 lation, proportion, lucidity, simplicity, decision, and 
 so on, to describe their likes, and such words as 
 superfluity, redundancy, weakness, vacillation, to 
 describe their dislikes. He will find himself, that 
 is to say, using ethical language to describe those 
 laws which are inherent in the sight of all creatures, 
 even to some extent in animals, which see at 
 all. Of course of all this interpretative work sight 
 knows nothing. It has no knowledge. It sees or 
 it does not see; it seeks or shuns certain objects 
 or surfaces, and there its business ends. It is the 
 mind which, noting the eyes' movements, supplies 
 the ethical interpretation. Still the eye provides 
 the matter to be interpreted, and if in any given 
 work the laws of sight are embodied fully and 
 
 119 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 perfectly, the ethical interpretation becomes inevit- 
 able. 
 
 Hence it follows that the more perfect an aesthetic 
 arrangement, the more inevitable will be its ethical 
 effect. The reason that " proportion " in architec- 
 ture suggests to us now nothing ethical is, that with 
 us the principle is so inadequately carried out on 
 the aesthetic side that it does not reach the point 
 of ethical consciousness. In the same way the 
 reason we never now connect artistic " design " 
 with any ethical meaning is because our aesthetic 
 design is not aesthetic to the required pitch. The 
 pleasure it gives to the eye, when it gives any, is of 
 so slight and accidental a kind that it has no chance 
 of awakening kindred ideas in the mind. It is not 
 aesthetic enough to be ethical. 
 
 But the Doric temple is aesthetic enough to be 
 ethical. In the Doric temple design, proportion, 
 harmony, unity, and so on, are carried to such 
 perfection, purely in relation to sight, that through 
 the eye they enter into possession of the mind. 
 Does the reader imagine that such an influence 
 must be slight or negligible ? I venture to say that 
 no one, puzzled by all that is obscure in life and 
 baffled by the eager nothings that crowd our tran- 
 sient days, could desire a move effectual restorative 
 than the contemplation of Doric architecture. 
 Resist, says philosophy, the importunities of the 
 passing hours ; he who is diverted from his pur- 
 pose by fugitive impulses will accomplish nothing ; 
 proportion your ends to your means, and, instead 
 of frittering away energy in a thousand caprices, 
 direct it to the purposes of some worthy design. 
 \Z0 
 
WHAT ART MEANT TO THE GREEKS 
 
 Philosophers have much to say in this vein, but for 
 my part, no words of theirs have ever appealed to 
 me with half the force of those mute stones which 
 owe ail the power their delicate lines are charged 
 with to their enforcement of these and similar 
 maxims. Remote as we are, of another race, 
 another creed, another age, still it is impossible even 
 for us, sitting among the olives and the asphodel 
 under those clear-cut architraves, not to feel, as the 
 Greeks felt, their persuasive advocacy of all that 
 makes life sane and noble. 
 
 It was thus this architecture acted on the Greeks. 
 There is a power of persuasion in the sense of sight 
 that surpasses even the power of reason. It is one 
 thing to be told that purpose implies simplicity, and 
 another to absorb through sight a consciousness of 
 simplicity in its visible effect. It is one thing to be 
 told that selflessness is the cement of society and 
 selfishness its solvent, and another to be impressed 
 by the influence of a structural composition which 
 achieves unity through the willing self-surrender of 
 all its component parts. Arguments addressed tc 
 the mind are strong, but a spectacle addressed to 
 the eye is stronger. Or, even if it be denied that it 
 is stronger, it is at least an independent testimony. 
 Though ethical in its interpretation it was not ethical 
 but purely aesthetic in its conception. By following 
 the eye's prompting the Greeks were led to these 
 results. There has always existed a consciousness 
 that the act of inward preception by the mind is one 
 with the outward act of seeing. Mystics, poets, and 
 all who realise inward things vividly, speak of the 
 eye of the mind and of spiritual sight, and we have 
 
 121 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 the common expression ''I see" for "I understand." 
 There exists a relationship between the laws of sight 
 and ethical laws, and so it was natural enough that 
 the Greeks, following the eye's dictates, should have 
 been led to an independent testimony to the value 
 of ethical truths. Thus considered, the aesthetic 
 faculty is no slave, but a splendid ally of the mind. 
 It brings troops of its own into the field, and^sup- 
 ports, with all that the eye holds beautiful, all that 
 the mind holds true. 
 
 This great thought of the Greeks, that sight is an 
 independent faculty, with laws of its own, lasted, 
 as I have said, both as a philosophical idea and 
 an aesthetic tradition, far into the Christian era. 
 Through Byzantine art it acted on the art of 
 Europe. It lingered to the twelfth century, and 
 then Gothic killed it. Gothic killed it by promul- 
 gating the theory that art exists to chronicle the life 
 of its age. The discovery produced a sensation, 
 and mediaeval life proceeded with enthusiasm to 
 embody itself in mediaeval art. We have it still with 
 us, that incomparably vigorous rendering of the life 
 of a period, and w^e are, no doubt, rightly proud of it. 
 But we have paid a price for it. We have given up 
 for it the Greek idea of sight as an independent 
 
 i witness. The idea that the mind can receive 
 impressions of truth through the eye has been 
 lost. Milton laments that, in his blindness, he 
 drags on his life with 
 
 "Wisdom at one entrance quite shut out." 
 
 Such has been our lot since the Gothic revolution. 
 We arc still active in art. We register in it our 
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WHAT ART MEANT TO THE GREEKS 
 
 ideas and theories, our whims and caprices. But 
 we can no longer draw from it that succour which 
 the Greeks drew when they looked up at their / 
 temples, raised on rocky pedestals for clearer view, 
 and read there, in visible form depicted, the beauty I 
 and pleasantness of noble conduct, I 
 
 123 
 
m 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 , THE LAST WORD IN CLASSIC 
 
 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 Santa Sophia : In what the building is unique : Its vindication 
 of the idea of arch construction : Romans had misused that 
 principle : The Roman jumble of arcuated and trabeated 
 construction : The Greeks deliver the arch from this confu- 
 sion and proceed to develop its intrinsic possibilities : Santa 
 Sophia is the result : It is rather to be looked upon as the last 
 word on classic building than as the inauguration of a new 
 style : Though commonly regarded as the type of Byzantine 
 it does not pursue the Byzantine ideal : It is not an architec- 
 ture of colour nor in agreement with other Byzantine buildings 
 in its mode of exhibiting colour : It is animated rather by the 
 old imperiarspirit of amplitude and order, but it expresses its 
 idea with a new logic and power : All that Roman architecture 
 tried to be and could not is attained in Santa Sophia : As a 
 summing up of the classical era it is a signal illustration of 
 the part which the Greek genius had played in that era 
 
 "SANTA SOPHIA/' says Mr. Van Milligan in a 
 book on Constantinople, which was given to the 
 present writer the other day to review, " is the finest 
 monument of what is styled Byzantine art." Else- 
 where in the same w^ork it is affirmed that " Santa 
 Sophia has never been repeated." I do not know 
 if Mr. Van Milligan is an authority on Byzantine 
 architecture, but certainly, so far as the judgment of 
 critics goes, he has ample warrant for both these 
 statements. Fergusson, the Gibbon of architectural 
 history, having accepted Santa Sophia as "the 
 grandest and most perfect creation of the old school 
 124 
 
LAST OF CLASSIC ARCHITECTURE 
 
 of Byzantine art," declares also that there was no 
 building "erected durin^^ the ten centuries which 
 elapsed from the transference of the capital to 
 Byzantium till the building of the great mediaeval 
 cathedrals (that is to say, during the entire Byzan- 
 tine period) which can be compared with it" ; and 
 again after describing the plan of the s*' Picture he 
 tells us that " in these arrangements Santa Sophia 
 seems to stand alone." Even Mr. Lethaby, certainly 
 one of the foremost authorities at the present time 
 on the subject, while he entirely accepts Justinian's 
 church as the central type of the style, yet adds, 
 agreeing with Fergusson, that in plan it is "alone 
 among churches." If the reader cares to turn over 
 some of the many books dealing with the subject he 
 will find these more or less conflicting views very 
 common. He will find the church, invariably and 
 as a matter of course, treated as the representative 
 type of the Byzantine style, but he will also find it 
 every now and then, and as though unconsciously, 
 treated as something singular and unique. It is 
 unnecessary to point out that these two kinds of 
 statements are incompatible, since it is impossible 
 for a building to be the type of a style and at the 
 same time to "stand alone." 
 
 These two propositions are contradictions in 
 terms, but yet, as applied to Santa Sophia, they 
 have perhaps a certain significance, even a certain 
 appropriateness. For while in some respects, and 
 these very striking and obvious ones, the building 
 may be said to belong to a group and represent a 
 style, in others, and these possibly of even deeper 
 significance, it is original and strikes out a line of 
 
 125 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 its own. Struck by the immediate similarities, by 
 the use of certain forms common to the Byzantine 
 group, such as the apse, the dome, the vault, and by 
 various decorative methods, as the use of marble 
 panelling and mosaics — the first impulse of the 
 critic is to accept the church as a specimen of 
 Byzantine art, and since it is unapproached of its 
 kind in size and richness and magnificence it is 
 natural, once accepted, that it should be promoted 
 to the place of leader and most honoured representa- 
 tive of that style. And yet there by-and-by arise 
 doubts, for as soon as the critic begins to deal with 
 the actual composition of the building, the develop- 
 ment of the domical theory right through its 
 structure, the rise of curve out of curve to the final 
 triumph of the great dome, and the unity achieved 
 by the dominance of a single structural principle, 
 he finds that he has to do with qualities which exist 
 in no other structure, and accordingly he changes 
 his note and instead of a representative building 
 we have one that " stands alone." 
 
 It seems pretty clear that in dealing with a ques- 
 tion like this — as to the extent to which a building 
 belongs to a certain style and the degree to which it 
 is separable from it — the point to be considered is 
 whether it belongs to the style by what is essential, 
 or by what is accidental. There are traits in 
 architecture which are vital, and in which the 
 architectural character, or style, of the building 
 resides. There are others which are more or less 
 superficial and perhaps more or less interchangeable 
 between several styles. The question, therefore, 
 we have to put is, does Santa Sophia represent the 
 126 
 
LAST OF CLASSIC ARCHITECTURE 
 Byzantine style by traits which are essential in its 
 own structure, or are these essential traits those in 
 which it stands alone, and does it represent the style 
 rather in accidents and details ? On the answer to 
 such a question the place of the Church in the 
 history of architecture must depend. 
 
 The main characteristics of the Greek genius — 
 namely, its strict adherence to logical principles and 
 its assiduity in lopping away all such superfluities 
 and inconsistencies as might hamper the expression 
 of such principles — this characteristic, so obvious in 
 its effects all through Greek literature and Greek 
 art, is particularly obvious in Greek architecture. 
 The supreme achievement of this architecture, to 
 the perfecting of which centuries of careful thought 
 and calculation had been devoted, was the Doric 
 temple, and the Doric temple was an exempHfica- 
 tion of the resources of a single primary structural 
 principle, the principle of the post and lintel, or 
 upright pillars supporting transverse blocks. This is 
 the simplest, the oldest and the most universal of all 
 building principles, but yet the latent logic in it 
 had never been developed into full expression prior 
 to the evolution of the Doric style. As has already 
 been pointed out, far from exhibiting this prin- 
 ciple to advantage, the sausage-shaped columns and 
 squat, ponderous entablatures of the Nile temples 
 do but hamper and conceal it, for it is impossible 
 to form the least idea of the carrying power of such 
 columns as these, columns which terminate in a 
 suddenly reduced and rounded base at one end, and 
 in an immense, corpulent bud or flower-shaped 
 
 127 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 
 capital at the other ; nor is it possible to conjecture 
 the proportionate dimensions of the weight the 
 columns carry disguised under the coarse and 
 shapeless forms which compose the entablature. 
 Thousands of years of practice and repetition had 
 left the lintel principle entirely inarticulate in 
 Egyptian hands. It lay hid somewhere under a 
 redundant mass of superfluous stone, which it was 
 essential to remove if the principle itself were to 
 be brought to light. 
 
 This operation was undertaken by the Greeks. 
 Exactly defined, every outline as sharp as if cut out 
 of crystal, every ounce of superfluous material pared 
 away, every form in the structure expressly adapted 
 to its proper function, the Greek temple exhibits 
 the greatest of all structural principles to the utmost 
 possible advantage. The sense of relative propor- 
 tion between support and burden which is veiled in 
 the Egyptian temple under the gross and inappro- 
 priate shapes of the forms employed, is developed 
 in the Greek with exquisite refinement. The column, 
 with sharp-edged flutes and elastic outline, is the 
 very embodiment of the idea of easy and powerful 
 support, while the crisply defined entablature is so 
 proportioned as to employ and justify all the strength 
 of the column without for a moment oppressing it. 
 It is quite evident that the Greeks have here grasped 
 the principle they arc dealing with, not as a fact 
 merely, but as an idea. They do not, I mean, 
 stick, where the Egyptians stuck, at the mere con- 
 venience of a certain means of support, but go on to 
 exhibit the effectiveness and the logical sufficiency 
 of this means of support, dwelling on it for its own 
 128 
 
LAST OF CLASSIC ARCHITECTURE 
 
 sake and drawing out all the expressiveness latent 
 in it. In this way they have made themselves the 
 spokesmen of a natural idea and are at the head of 
 a main body of architectural work that goes back 
 through the ages. All that made the action of the 
 builders of Stonehenge right and reasonable when 
 they crossed their huge monoliths, all that makes 
 the action of any farm-hand to-day right and 
 reasonable when he knocks up a cowshed in the 
 corner of a field — in short, all there is eternally 
 logical in the post and lintel principle of construc- 
 tion the Doric temple utters once for all with 
 supreme felicity. 
 
 Such was the characteristically logical action of 
 the Greeks in the sphere of trabeated or lintel 
 architecture. Let us come down now to the next 
 age and to the introduction of a new principle, new 
 at least in the dominating position assigned to it in 
 the architecture it appeared in. A people of drains, 
 of bridges, of aqueducts, the arch suited admirably 
 the utilitarian instincts of the Romans. But yet, 
 though they made this feature their own and spread 
 it through the Empire, the Romans never developed 
 its full possibilities or appreciated it as a principle 
 at all. The large and harmonious results and con- 
 sequent aesthetic significance which a great structural 
 motive, loyally adhered to and permitted to develop 
 its own nature, might achieve, were never grasped 
 by them or understood For the purposes of con- 
 struction they for the most part used the arch, but 
 they used it without freedom and without com- 
 pleteness ; while for the addition of aesthetic 
 significance they had recourse, without in the least 
 
 1 129 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 comprehending its real value, to that earlier and 
 simpler principle of which the Greek treatment had 
 so enormously enhanced the prestige. But these 
 two principles, the arch and the lintel, are, as it is 
 scarcely necessary to point out, incompatible with 
 and destructive of each other. They do their work 
 in different ways, the one by diffusing and spreading 
 the pressure of the superincumbent weight, the 
 other by meeting it direct ; and no combination 
 between them is therefore possible. None the less, 
 in Roman work they are constantly combined, or 
 rather they are constantly employed in the same 
 buildings to each other's mutual discomfiture. The 
 arch and vault usually do the real supporting, 
 and columns and entablatures are lacquered over 
 the fagade as an afterthought to supply the artistic 
 finish. 
 
 The effect of this unnatural coalition was to turn 
 lintel construction into a mere unmeaning decorative 
 detail, and to stunt and thwart the development 
 of arched construction altogether. It is with the 
 second of these effects that we are here concerned. 
 It is not, perhaps, sufficiently realised by the large 
 number of people who conceive of Roman architec- 
 ture as the great opportunity of arched construction, 
 how essentially second rate all Roman arched 
 construction is. * Roman architecture daunts us by 
 sheer size and strength, by the endurance of its iron 
 concrete and the insolent display of its brilliant and 
 showy decoration ; and seeing that it stands for 
 Rome's might, majesty and dominion, we are apt to 
 forget that it stands no less incontestably for Rome's 
 lack of lucidity and logic, for Rome's dullness of 
 
 130 
 
LAST OF CLASSIC ARCHITECTURE 
 fnward vision and vulgarity of soul. The truth is, 
 of all this tremendous architectural accumulation 
 there is not a building extant which can be called a 
 genuine architectural success ; for by a genuine 
 architectural success we imply, I suppose, the 
 working out of some great structural motive or 
 principle in such a way, so completely and freely 
 and disinterestedly, that so long as the principle 
 itself applies to the affairs of men, this building in 
 which its properties are exhibited to such advantage 
 shall, for its idea's sake, be welcome and acceptable 
 also. Rome had a great principle to go on, but to 
 express it freely and disinterestedly was beyond her. 
 The heavy Roman vaults and domes, wrought in 
 solid masses of concrete stuck on like the lid of a 
 saucepan, offer no illustration of the capabilities of 
 the arch principle. That principle was indeed used 
 by the Romans exactly as the lintel principle had 
 been used by the Egyptians. It was used, I mean, 
 in a purely utilitarian sense, as a convenience in 
 building, but nothing more. The Roman arch is a 
 useful enough method of support. The Roman 
 vault and dome are convenient enough ways of 
 roofing a passage here or a hall there. But their 
 application is always local and finite, nor was it 
 ever suspected by the Roman genius that the play 
 of forces contained in the arch could be driven 
 through an entire structure, controlling, animating 
 and harmonising the whole of it. 
 
 Nevertheless upon her own limited interpretation 
 of the principle Rome insisted. Obstinate, callous, 
 implacable, she set a fashion by sheer physical 
 weight. The centre and driving-wheel of the whole 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 vast political machine, every provincial town to the 
 uttermost limits of the Empire turned submissive 
 eyes to Rome. The great Roman roads, architec- 
 tural works themselves of the first importance, 
 driven from town to town, composed the meshes of 
 a net which held the whole empire in a state of 
 political thraldom. But the thraldom was more 
 than political. The subordinate and distant towns, 
 as they derived all authority and importance, all 
 their ideas of government and of justice, their 
 governors and officials, their hopes of privileges and 
 preferments from the metropolis, so, with an equal 
 meekness, they adopted those fashions in art and 
 especially in architecture which, if they expressed 
 nothing else, expressed at least Rome's ponderous 
 ascendancy. The theatres and ampitheatres, the 
 villas and palaces, the triumphal arches and great 
 public baths which profusely decorated the capital, 
 decorated also, if more sparingly, the provinces. 
 They were all formed on Roman models and 
 accepted the limitations of Roman taste. It is true 
 indeed, and it is curious and interesting to notice it, 
 that throughout the towns of the eastern part of the 
 Empire, among the population of which were 
 scattered, it will be remembered, a fair sprinkling of 
 Greek inhabitants, there was early evinced a disposi- 
 tion to distinguish between and disentangle the 
 structural principles which Rome had forced into 
 conjunction. The properties of the arch were not 
 developed, but there was a tendency to clear away 
 the relics of lintel construction which had so long 
 obstructed it, and thus to lay the foundations of a 
 more free and reasonable design. These signs were, 
 132 
 
LAST OF CLASSIC ARCHITECTURE 
 
 however, slight and without decisive result. So 
 long as Rome's undisputed sway held, the style of 
 building she had imposed, though subjected to 
 various modifications, held too. 
 
 Nor, indeed, did the division of the Empire and 
 the founding of a new capital on the shores of the 
 Bosphorus produce any immediate change. Con- 
 stantine's great city, magnificent and luxurious as 
 it was, was magnificent and luxurious in the Roman 
 way. The slopes of what is now Seraglio Point 
 were studded with palaces, beyond which rose the 
 Acropolis with its Forum Augusteum, the royal 
 palace facing the sea, and west of this the Hippo- 
 drome. The baths and theatres, the porticoes and 
 terraces of marble steps reproduced the luxury and 
 the fashions of Rome. It must be remembered, 
 further, that the Emperor's change of faith implied 
 no violent breach with ancient usage. '^Constan- 
 tine's city," as Mr. Lethaby points out, " does not 
 appear to have been so completely Christian as the 
 ecclesiastical writers would have us suppose," and 
 in justification of this surmise he quotes the report 
 of Zosimus that Constantine erected a shrine to 
 the Dioscuri in the Hippodrome, and that various 
 other temples dedicated to pagan divinities existed, 
 
 " A whole population of bronze and marble statues 
 was brought together from Greece, Asia Minor and 
 Sicily. The baths of Zeuxippus alone are said to 
 have had more than sixty bronze statues ; a still 
 greater number were assembled in the Augusteum 
 and other squares, and in the Hippodrome, where, 
 according to Zosimus, Constantine placed the 
 
 133 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 
 Pythian tripod which had been the central object 
 in the Temple of Apollo at Delphi." 
 
 Classic associations and traditions were, in short, 
 transplanted in full vigour to the new capital. 
 Justinian himself was a typical Imperial ruler, with 
 all the Imperial passion for pomp and display. 
 His own colossal statue in bronze graced the Hip- 
 podrome ; the baths he had given to the city were 
 among its most splendid adornments, and every 
 city in his dominion was enriched during his reign 
 with important architectural additions. A second 
 Augustus, intensely proud of his office and con- 
 scious of its transmitted majesty, nothing could 
 have been more utterly removed from his thoughts 
 than the idea of a breach of any kind with the 
 spirit of classic Imperialism. Nor was there in 
 popular life any tendency to such a breach. Thanks 
 to the essentially tolerant nature of paganism, the 
 new religion came in, on the whole, quietly and 
 amicably. It entered forthwith into an inheritance 
 of artistic and architectural remains, as vast in 
 extent as they were doubtful in quality, which it 
 proceeded to turn to its own uses and requirements, 
 nor, on the part of the people any more than on 
 that of the Emperor, was there any desire to 
 repudiate the ideas and arts of their forefathers. 
 
 Bearing these facts in mind, we shall the better 
 understand the problem set before the architects 
 of Santa Sophia by the Emperor. There was no 
 question of disowning the past or breaking violently 
 with an ancient tradition. Rome's example was 
 still held in affection and respect. And yet that 
 
LAST OF CLASSIC ARCHITECTURE 
 
 example could not have quite the same weight on 
 the shores of the Euxine that it had on the 
 banks of the Tiber. Not only was the new capital 
 remote from the centre of the Roman Classical 
 influence, but it was situated in the midst of the 
 Hellenistic influence, in a part of the Empire where 
 Greek ideas were dominant. It has been pointed 
 out already that in the Near East, and especially 
 was this the case in Syria, Greek taste had acted on 
 Roman principles of construction in such a way as, 
 tentatively at least, to purify and simplify them. 
 In Constantinople, built on the site of a Greek 
 colony and itself mainly Greek in thought and 
 culture, the Greek genius for the first time was in 
 a position to give these tentative suggestions free 
 utterance. An opportunity was thus offered for a 
 formal criticism, never till now possible, by the 
 Greek genius upon Roman architecture. 
 
 Whether there had been earlier indications what 
 that criticism was to be, whether and to what 
 extent Santa Sophia had its heralds, is a point on 
 which critics still dispute. They have, in any case, 
 almost entirely disappeared, and Santa Sophia, the 
 greatest architectural effort of its age, the work 
 of Greek architects in a Greek city, is the first 
 example of an emancipated, freely spoken Greek 
 judgment on the structural ideas of the Roman era. 
 Standing at the close of that era it sums up the 
 problem Rome has been dealing with and pro- 
 pounds its own solution. 
 
 What that solution was a glance at the great church 
 itself is sufficient to indicate. The plan of Santa 
 Sophia is approximately a square of 250 feet by 225, 
 
 i35 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 of which the central portion, io6 feet by 200, is 
 open from the floor to the roof. The noble sense 
 of spaciousness, which is the prevailing impression 
 here present, is, however, attained not merely by 
 the amplitude of the proportions but by the 
 rhythmical sequence and evolution of the great 
 unfolding curves of the vaulting. These rise in 
 degrees of small supporting domes, semi-domes 
 and segments of domes, until they culminate in the 
 '* deep-bosomed " central dome, as Procopius calls 
 it, of 107 feet span, which sweeps with incompar- 
 able boldness and freedom across the central area 
 of the building. All who have ever visited the 
 church have been struck by the majesty and har- 
 mony of these mounting curves, and have echoed 
 Procopius's own account of their appearance. 
 " From the lightness of the building, the dome does 
 not appear to rest upon a solid foundation, but to 
 cover the place beneath as though it were suspended 
 from heaven by the fabled golden chain." And he 
 adds, with reference to the general structure : "All 
 these parts, surprisingly joined to one another in the 
 air, suspended one from another, and resting only 
 on that which is next to them, form the work into 
 one admirably harmonious whole." Such, indeed, 
 is the aspect of the place. Many years have passed 
 since I stood myself under those clustering cavities, 
 but yet their appearance is as present to my eye 
 now as at that moment ; so clear and unmistakable, 
 so unhampered by irrelevancies and unobscured by 
 conflicting elements, is the structural principle they 
 enforce. 
 
 That structural principle, I need hardly say, is 
 136 
 
LAST OF CLASSIC ARCHITECTURE 
 
 the principle of the arch, including under that 
 definition the vault and dome, which are merely 
 logical developments of the arch principle. Of 
 the completeness and mathematical precision with 
 which that motive is carried out through every part 
 of the building it would be impossible without 
 diagrams to give an adequate idea. M. Choisy, in 
 his already authoritative work, " I'Art de Batir chez 
 les Byzantins," has devoted a volume to the subject, 
 with results which will surprise no one who has 
 learnt to appreciate the entire devotion of the 
 Greeks to the idea they are enforcing. One expe- 
 dient of primary importance in domical construction, 
 and now for the first time fully developed, may be 
 instanced as illustrative of the building's character. 
 It will easily be understood that a circle super- 
 imposed upon a square in such a way that the rim 
 of the circle rests upon the edge of each of the four 
 sides of the square must leave at each of the angles 
 a large segment of the circle unsupported. The 
 problem how to fill in this gap, or how, in other 
 words, to adapt a square foundation to a circular 
 superstructure, had never hitherto been satisfac- 
 torily solved. It had, indeed, constituted a recog- 
 nised difficulty and stumbling-block in that kind of 
 construction, which had in various ways been 
 slurred over, but had never been fairly met. The 
 architects of Santa Sophia met it by applying 
 segments of domical vaulting to the unsupported 
 angles, built outwards from each corner of the 
 square below, and expanding as they rise until their 
 upper edge attains the lower rim of the dome. 
 These segments not only fill in the gap and afford 
 
 137 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 
 a proper toundation for the dome to rest on, collect- 
 ing the thrust of it at the angles immediately above 
 the great supporting piers, but they are in them- 
 selves a perfectly logical application of the domical 
 theory, and their expanding, mounting curves are 
 in harmony with the scheme of the whole interior. 
 It is probable that the name of Anthemius will 
 always be primarily associated with the use of this 
 mode of construction ; nevertheless, as they occur 
 in the building, these " pendentives," as they are 
 called, so belong to the whole that they might 
 almost be said to be the invention of the building 
 itself. 
 
 The absorption of the whole interior of Santa 
 Sophia in this play of curves which compose it 
 remains its dominant characteristic, and is compar- 
 able to the system of thrust and counter-thrust 
 which pervades the whole of a Gothic cathedral and 
 maintains its equilibrium. There is, however, one 
 important difference which is in favour of the 
 older building. The Gothic theory, while it equally 
 inspires every part and portion of the edifice, does 
 not and cannot result in structural unity. Each 
 member of the cathedral — the nave, the transepts, 
 the choir, the chapels and chapter-houses and 
 baptisteries — is structurally complete in itself and 
 does not form part of an organic whole. The 
 cathedral, in fact, is logically not one building but 
 a conglomeration of many buildings, the number 
 of which may be and often has been increased or 
 reduced without affecting the general result. The 
 dome in this respect has advantages denied to the 
 pointed arch. The great concave that broods over 
 
 138 
 
I fear this gives but a fai?it notion of the sequence of curves which 
 makes S. Sophia the supreme example of the arch principle 
 
 INTERIOR OF S. SOPHIA A 138 
 
LAST OP CLASSIC ARCHITECTURE 
 
 the centre of Santa Sophia strikes the note of unity 
 of the whole building ; it draws together every part 
 of the structure into its own service. The whole 
 system of domes and semi-domes combines to 
 uphold it. The columns and piers group them- 
 selves in obedience to its requirements. Lifted 
 high over the building, it is to be taken as the final 
 expression of the thought which animates every 
 part and portion of it, a thought which every line 
 and curve in the structure prepares the way for 
 and unites in corroborating. 
 
 Now, if the reader will turn his attention to the 
 Roman method of treating the arch principle, and 
 contrast it with the method employed in Santa 
 Sophia, he will appreciate the significance of Greek 
 criticism. Many Roman buildings contained all 
 the characteristic structural features of Santa Sophia. 
 The vault was used, the apse was used, the dome 
 was used, the arch was used. But in Roman hands 
 each of these features is a thing distinct in itself, 
 finite, with its own immediate purpose, but ignorant 
 of the very existence of its fellows, and indeed more 
 often than not ignorant of its own nature, for Roman 
 vaults and domes are usually mere blocks of concrete, 
 not true arched constructions at all. Naturally, as 
 we have seen, Rome's ignorance of the nature of 
 her own structural principle encouraged her to 
 combine and confuse it with a principle of a con- 
 flicting character. This is the state of chaos cor- 
 rected by Santa Sophia. Santa Sophia seizes upon 
 the thought which really does lie at the bottom of 
 all that loaded and incongruous matter, and stripping 
 away irrelevancies and granting it for the first time 
 
 139 
 
THE WORKS OP MAN 
 free play, brings out at last its power and beauty. 
 The thwarted hope, the foiled career, the 
 
 '' All 1 could never be 
 All men ignored in me " 
 
 of the Roman arch finds expression in the Greek. 
 And what I hope the reader will remark is that, in 
 thus drawing out the significance of this principle, 
 the ^ Greek architects of the new church were but 
 acting after the manner of their race. They were 
 but doing for the Roman arch exactly what their 
 forefathers had done for the Egyptian lintel, strip- 
 ping from it the superfluous matter which obscured 
 the thought within, until the substance left became, 
 as it were, the incarnation of the structural principle 
 on which they were working. 
 
 There are traits, I began by saying, in architec- 
 ture which are vital and which constitute the style 
 of a building, and others which are more or less 
 accidental and interchangeable and do not constitute 
 style. It seems to me that no disinterested critic, 
 who has submitted himself to the influence of Santa 
 Sophia, and has considered its relations with the 
 Roman architecture that led up to it, can be in 
 much doubt as to what the style in it consists in. It 
 does not consist in such decorative additions as the 
 use of mosaics and marble panelling ; for such 
 decoration might all be stripped from the church, 
 as indeed to a large extent it has been, without in 
 the least affecting the character of the architecture. 
 Nor does it even consist in the use of certain 
 structural forms, as the dome and apse and vault, 
 though these of course are more essential, for 
 140 
 
LAST OF CLASSIC ARCHITECTURE 
 all these, as we have seen, were used in many 
 Roman buildings, and used even in conjunction 
 with marble panelling and mosaics. All the features, 
 structural and decorative, employed in Santa Sophia 
 had already often been combined, and yet their 
 combination had not resulted in a structure more 
 than remotely resembling Santa Sophia in cha- 
 racter. It is not, then, these things that compose 
 the style of the Greek church. Enumerate every 
 feature here present, and you are no nearer a 
 satisfactory definition. They will every one be 
 found in the baths of Caracalla. But if from 
 structural features you turn to structural principles ; 
 if, instead of saying that dome, apse and vault are 
 here present, you say the whole building is con- 
 ceived as an exposition of the arch principle, then 
 indeed you name that which really gives character 
 and style to the church, the essential trait in it on a 
 participation in which any claim to a real relation- 
 ship betwixt it and other buildings must be based. 
 
 But if this is indeed the essential characteristic of 
 Santa Sophia, the question immediately arises, how 
 are we to reconcile its position as the exponent of 
 arcuated construction with its position as the proto- 
 type of the Byzantine style ? For Santa Sophia, of 
 course, figures in architectural history not as the 
 solution of the earlier Roman, but as the supreme 
 type of the later Byzantine architecture. Between 
 Santa Sophia and Byzantine buildings generally a 
 most real and intimate relationship is claimed ; and 
 yet I have never myself heard that relationship based 
 on the ground of a common exposition of the possi- 
 bilities of arcuated construction ; nor, indeed, is it 
 
 141 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 easy to see, when one recalls the general appearance, 
 the heavy proportions !and passive, inert weight of 
 Byzantine interiors generally, how without palpable 
 absurdity such a claim could be advanced. True, 
 Byzantine uses all the arch forms, dome, apse and 
 vault which Santa Sophia uses, but it does not use 
 them to the same end. Byzantine domes and vaults 
 are ponderous, low and solid. The interiors are 
 obscure and darkly shadowed, and the general im- 
 pression they convey, upheld as they are by huge 
 square piers, is as of excavations dug out by miners 
 rather than a construction of architecture. Nothing 
 can be imagined more opposed to that lightness 
 of structural vitality which inspires the bounding 
 vaults of Santa Sophia than the massive solidity and 
 heaviness of the later Byzantine structure. More- 
 over, what seems to make the difference the more 
 pronounced is that these later Byzantine interiors 
 are so alike in character that it is obvious that they, 
 too, are working out a definite intention, though not 
 the intention of Santa Sophia. The prevalence of 
 low, solid curves, dimly lit and darkly shadowed, 
 gives to all of them a kindred character and indicates 
 a common purpose. The architectural conditions 
 here present are certainly very ill adapted for the 
 display of any structural principles whatever, but 
 Ihey are singularly well adapted for the display of 
 an ideal of another kind. Those of my readers who 
 remember the dim, rich twilight that suffuses the 
 interior of Saint Mark's at Venice will scarcely require 
 to be told what that ideal was. The deep vaulting, 
 wrought apparently out of soft gold, the solemn 
 figures inlaid in its surface, the deep shadows that 
 T42 
 
LAST OF CLASSIC ARCHITECTURE 
 
 sometimes disclose the sheen of the gold but more 
 often wrap it in a semi-obscurity through which it 
 glows fitfully like the smouldering embers of a fire, 
 all these are conditions which enforce with extra- 
 ordinary power the effect of splendour of colouring. 
 They are characteristics, moreover, in which all 
 Byzantine buildings participate, and they constitute 
 what is typical in the style. But does the reader 
 imagine that there is anything whatever in common 
 between such a building as this and Santa Sophia ? 
 There is, to be sure, this in common, that St. Mark 
 uses the dome and the apse and the vault, and uses 
 also mosaics and marble panelling. These are 
 features it has in common with Santa Sophia, just 
 as Santa Sophia has them in common with Cara- 
 calla's baths. But if we would realise how super- 
 ficial is the attempt to characterise architecture by 
 detail instead of general intention and effect, we 
 could scarcely do better than contrast in our minds 
 these two buildings which possess so many features in 
 common, yet which are so opposed in general effect. 
 So opposed, indeed, are they that they address 
 themselves to different faculties of the mind. Santa 
 Sophia, developing a great structural principle in 
 broad daylight with unexampled logic and daring, 
 addresses itself entirely to the intellect. St. Mark's, 
 sensuous and contemplative, with its dark splendour 
 of colouring half seen, half guessed, in the rich 
 obscurity of its vaults, addresses itself entirely to the 
 emotions. It is impossible to bring two such build- 
 ings to terms with each other of any kind, and to 
 pretend that they both belong to the same style is 
 to deprive the word style of any comprehensible 
 
 143 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 meaning. St. Mark's, it is to be remembered, carries 
 out its own purposes and develops its own effects 
 with just as much consistency as Santa Sophia itself. 
 And these purposes and effects are the purposes 
 and effects of the Byzantine style generally. They 
 are reproduced in countless buildings throughout 
 Eastern Europe, and more sparingly throughout Italy 
 and Sicily, their appearance keeping pace with the 
 spread and prevalence of Greek immigrants. But 
 by all that draws them together they are separated 
 from Santa Sophia. The gulf between them is 
 the gulf between reason and emotion in human 
 character and between form and colour in art. 
 
 To conclude then, what I would suggest to the 
 reader as the really significant quality in Santa 
 Sophia is the exposition it gives of the nature of the 
 arch as a structural principle. This is the " essential 
 trait" in it, that which represents the intention of 
 the architect and gives style to his work, and in 
 comparison with this all other features are of 
 superficial and negligible importance. In this, too, 
 it seems to me, lies the building's chief source of 
 historical and human interest, since in this respect 
 •it stands for the emergence, after long eclipse, of 
 the Greek genius in its familiar rdle of expounder of 
 the principles of art in vogue in the world. This, 
 surely, is importance and significance sufficient for 
 any one building. Only if we interpret it in this sense, 
 we must relinquish its claim to be the prototype of 
 the Byzantine style. ' For this is ground Byzan- 
 tine cannot share with it. When Fergusson, after 
 describing the perfect logic of the new church's 
 domical construction, concludes that, in its own 
 
LAST OF CLASSIC ARCHITECTURE 
 method of construction, "Santa Sophia seems to 
 stand alone," he makes a statement there is no 
 quaHfying or disputing at all. In its logical de- 
 velopment of the arch principle the church certainly 
 does stand alone, for on these lines Byzantine 
 buildings not only do not rival but do not compete 
 with it. 
 
 Let the reader, then, choose. If he accepts a 
 catalogue of structural and decorative features as 
 embodying the character or style of Santa Sophia, 
 he will indeed be able to establish a relationship 
 indifferently between it and Roman, Byzantine, oi 
 even Persian and Moorish architecture; but it will 
 be a relationship of superficialities which will tend 
 to obscure the real significance and human interest 
 of architecture and reduce it to a study and com- 
 parison of mere technical details. On the other 
 hand, if he accepts the arch principle as the keynote 
 of Santa Sophia and reads the building as the Greek 
 comment on Roman Imperial architecture, he will 
 be helped to certain clear and simple definitions. 
 Henceforth Roman architecture will appear as a 
 prolonged struggle between two irreconcilable 
 principles, the arch and lintel ; while Santa Sophia 
 will stand for the deliverance of the arch principle 
 from the clutches of its enemy and the final exhibi- 
 tion of its full power and beauty. It will be the last 
 word in a long controversy. For long Roman 
 methods and the Roman Imperialism had dominated 
 art, and under that dominion the old clear-thoughted 
 loyalty to definite ideas and fixed principles had 
 given place to a jumble of antagonistic statements. 
 The Greek influence in these latter pagan centuries 
 
 K 145 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 
 seemed extinct. And yet, at the closing of that 
 epoch, a final opportunity was granted it to which 
 it still had power to respond. I am not sure that, 
 coming as it does after so long a decadence, the 
 purity of Santa Sophia and its perfect intellectual 
 lucidity are not a higher testimony to the essential 
 qualities of the Greek genius and temperament than 
 even the Doric masterpieces of the race's prime. 
 At any rate I know no better way of realising what 
 the secret, potent Greek influence consisted in than 
 by turning first to the stuttering and stammering of 
 Roman architecture, and then to the same thought 
 uttered in the clear, bell-like speech of Santa 
 Sophia, 
 
 146 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 THE ARAB IN ARCHITECTURE* 
 
 Arab architecture as a presentment of Arab character : Living 
 qualities of the race : Its terrific energy combined with fickle- 
 ness and instability : All Arab enterprise to this day 
 marked by same combination : Arab war : Arab science and 
 scholarship and civilisation generally : Their rapid but cva- 
 nescent achievements : Testimony of their buildings : Their 
 hatred of all steadfast and stable forms : Fate of the round 
 arch in their hands : Their destructive impulse : Their 
 inability to construct : Their tendency to the fantastic and 
 whimsical ; The structural forms of Arab buildings are the 
 racial traits in their living image 
 
 ARAB architecture is the best presentment of Arab 
 character that remains to us. No historical evidence 
 can furnish forth to the understanding a likeness of 
 the man so expressive as this architecture offers to 
 the eye. Yet its significance is apt to be overlooked, 
 and overlooked usually for the same reason. Between 
 almost all the books dealing wholly or in part with 
 Arab and Moorish art which have passed through 
 my hands during the lastjyear, there exists, under all 
 differences of treatment and style, one fundamental 
 resemblance. They almost all regard Arab archi- 
 tecture from the same, namely, from .he romantic, 
 standpoint. They almost all, that is to say, treat 
 it not as a subject possessing a definite meaning, and 
 
 * I have treated this subject more fully in my book, " In 
 the Desert." 
 
 M7 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 Capable of rational explanation, but as an opportunity 
 for exercising those sentimental and poetic feelings 
 in which it is always so pleasant to indulge. The 
 Arab himself, more than any figure in all history, is 
 steeped in romance and sentiment, and his curious 
 fantastic architecture, embodying as it does the same 
 quaUties, addresses itself naturally to the sentimental 
 faculties in each one of us. Its fascinating associa- 
 tions, its strange and unfamiliar aspect, its forlornness 
 and desolation, its gardens, nightingales and orange 
 blossoms, incite us perpetually to poetry and tears. 
 " Ah, I forgot the city," cries Mr. Hutton on entering 
 the Mosque at Cordova, ** I forgot the desolation, I 
 forgot the dust that seems to have crumbled from 
 innumerable desolations as I wandered in that holy 
 and secret place ; I lost myself in a new contem- 
 plation ; I kissed the old voluptuous marbles, I 
 touched the strange precious inscriptions, and with 
 my finger I traced the name of God." 
 
 This is the temper, romantic rather than rational, 
 in which the examination of Arab architecture is 
 usually conducted, and what I wish to point out 
 is that, however effective the result may be from the 
 literary point of view, such a treatment ignores 
 altogether one very powerful source of interest which 
 Arab architecture possesses ; the interest, I mean, 
 which belongs to it as an interpretation, quite literal, 
 exact and reliable, of Arab character. In its eager 
 inventiveness, in the capricious changes, complica- 
 tions and inflections of its designs, in its impulsive 
 energy, and above all in its inherent weakness and 
 instability, there is depicted in this style, if we would 
 but coolly and rationally examine it, a visible repre- 
 148 
 
THE ARAB IN ARCHITECTURE 
 
 sentation of the Arab as we know him in history, or 
 as he is to be met with to-day in the flesh in those 
 deserts to which the progress of more stable races 
 has once again relegated him. The stamp and impress 
 taken of him by these eccentric arches and purpose- 
 less entanglements of tracery are the stamp and 
 impress which he gave to all his undertakings. His 
 impetuous yet ill-sustained campaigns have this 
 character ; his so-called civilisation, so imposing yet 
 so fugitive, has it ; all his scientific and intellectual 
 achievements, informed with vague visions and trans- 
 cendental guesses, have it ; above all the man him- 
 self, full of fiery, short-lived and contradictory 
 impulses, is the incarnation of it. 
 
 Let us specify, if we can, the living characteristics 
 of the race before we attempt to trace its likeness in 
 stone. They should not be difficult to seize. From 
 the moment of the Arab's first appearance on the 
 world's stage we are conscious of a new force acting 
 on human affairs. The old stock of warring ideals 
 which throughout the East and West, among the 
 attackers and defenders of classicalism, had given 
 rise to fluctuations of regular recurrence and similar 
 character, was with the coming of the Arab suddenly 
 modified by the addition of a hitherto unknown 
 ingredient, the effect of which was instantaneous 
 As a dash of petroleum stimulates an unwilling fire, 
 so the Arab ardour fanned to a blaze the general 
 conflagration which was consuming the old order of 
 things. Destruction, the clearing of the ground for 
 a new growth, seems to have been the main purpose 
 of that age, and as a destructive agent the Arab was 
 without a peer. That terrific energy of his, so 
 
 149 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 
 furiously rapid in its progress, so irresistible in its 
 attack, so blasting in its effects, is comparable only 
 to the light and glancing motions of tongues of flame. 
 But yet, on the other hand, if the Arab energy is like 
 fire swift and irresistible, it is like fire fickle. In all 
 affairs of whatever kind in which the Arab has been 
 concerned, fickleness equally with energy plays its 
 part. One is constantly reminded, in dealing with 
 him, or noting his behaviour in history, of the lack in 
 him of that faculty of solid reason which lends such 
 unmistakable coherence and continuity to the designs 
 of the Western nations. In manners and customs, in 
 likes and dislikes, in all he does and leaves undone, 
 in his very mien and gait, in the glance of his eye and 
 the tone of his voice, the fact that the Arab is governed 
 by passion rather than by reason is unmistakably 
 revealed. In ordinary intercourse this emotional 
 tendency lends to his actions something incalculable 
 and unexpected, since it is impossible to foresee 
 what his conduct will be under any given circum- 
 stances, or what whim or sudden impulse may divert 
 his course or hurry him in a moment from one point of 
 view to another. Hence that agreement and co-ope- 
 ration which prevail among people who are guided 
 by reason never are and never have been possible 
 for any length of time among the Arabs, for where 
 all action is a matter of sentimental impulse and the 
 emotion of the moment, it is impossible to guarantee 
 that any two men will judge alike, or indeed thai 
 any one man will judge to-day as he judged yester- 
 day or will judge to-morrow. ■- In short, emotion as 
 a motive power, while it ensures tremendous energy 
 and suddenness and swiftness of action, is sure to 
 
 150 
 
THE ARAB IN ARCHITECTURE 
 result also in such action being discontinuous and 
 spasmodic, liable to die out suddenly or change at a 
 moment's notice to another direction. As the 
 reader knows, every enterprise set on foot among 
 the desert tribes is still invariably based on appeals 
 to passion and fanaticism, rather than on any reason- 
 able or definable policy, and the resulting outbreak 
 is always as short-lived and ill-directed as it is violent 
 and unexpected. Its energy and impotence alike 
 mark it as the effect of passion rather than reason. 
 
 But the same characteristics have distinguished 
 Arab action in all ages. Their first furious eruption 
 was exactly similar in character to any desert rising 
 of to-day, the apparent difference existing solely 
 in the surroundings. The Arab of the present, less 
 happily circumstanced than the Arab of the seventh 
 or eighth century, has to encounter in his adversaries 
 just that capacity for combining and co-operating 
 which is characteristic of a civilisation founded on 
 the rational faculty, and which he has himself always 
 so signally lacked. Against an opposition of this 
 kind he is powerless, he cannot operate, he cuts no 
 figure at all ; you would scarcely take him for the 
 same man as he who, with the world a darkened 
 stage prepared for him, displayed his peculiar talents 
 upon it to such terrible advantage thirteen hundred 
 years ago. 
 
 And yet, apart from circumstances, our Arab 
 of thirteen hundred years ago was the Arab of 
 to-day. Among the vague accounts which have 
 come down to us of his earliest campaigns we shall 
 look in vain for any reasoned scheme of operations, 
 any definable strategy, even any knowledge of the 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 physical features and probable powers of resistance 
 of the various countries attacked. All was guess- 
 work. All was left to chance and the blind dictates 
 of a vague enthusiasm. The warlike operations of 
 the Arabs in no way resemble the tactics of regular 
 armies. Supplies, transport, equipment, a military 
 base, lines of communication, all these factors in a 
 steady and organised advance are wanting in their 
 evolutions. Composed entirely of cavalry and un- 
 encumbered with provisions and baggage, the swift- 
 ness of the Saracen advance almost baffles observa- 
 tion. The progress of Kaled through Syria, of Okba 
 through Africa, of Tarik through Spain suggests the 
 passage of a whirlwind rather than the march of 
 armies. But the secret of this swiftness is to be 
 sought not so much in the fact that the Arabs 
 marched light and were all well mounted, but rather 
 in those peculiarities of temperament which urged 
 them to use these means of speed with such furious 
 ardour. These extraordinary campaigns are en- 
 livened by, or indeed made up of, incidents which 
 constantly testify to the emotional and fiery nature 
 of the race. Personal deeds of romantic daring 
 take the place of strategical dispositions, and each 
 separate Moslem appears like a missile loosed from 
 the desert and charged with an inward momentum 
 which irresistibly drives him on. Small wonder 
 that armies thus composed, whether heading for the 
 Atlantic or the frontiers of China, should always be 
 at the full gallop. 
 
 And, second, to this furious energy which is the 
 first trait noticeable in the Arab attack, there is 
 discernible a haunting element of weakness and 
 
 IS* 
 
THE ARAB IN ARCHITECTURE 
 
 instability. These eager cavaliers rarely drive their 
 attack straight home, but wheel and hover round 
 their perplexed enemy until accident or ill-discipline 
 opens an opportunity. Formidable as their elan is, 
 and terribly effective as it proved in the circum- 
 stances under which the Arab invasions were 
 conducted, we can easily believe that Gibbon was 
 right when he suggested that "the Empire of 
 Trajan, or even of Constantine or Charlemagne, 
 would have repelled the assault of the naked 
 Saracens, and the torrent of fanaticism might have 
 been obscurely lost in the sands of Arabia." It 
 will be found, I think, that during the crusades and 
 the Sicilian and Spanish campaigns, though the 
 European forces often suffered heavily through 
 their own rashness, or the unaccustomed conditions 
 of climate and country, yet they seldom failed, even 
 when heavily outnumbered, to get the best of it in 
 fair fighting. Twenty to one, the odds allowed by 
 Count Roger, might no doubt be an excessive dis- 
 parity ; but I imagine, when once the sense of 
 nationality had developed in them, that a French- 
 man, a Spaniard, or an Englishman in a hand-to- 
 hand struggle was always worth at least four or 
 five Saracens. 
 
 The truth is, and ultimately Arab history is a 
 proof of it, that passion, however furious, is strong 
 only in appearance. The qualities that make an 
 army really formidable are in the main rational 
 qualities. What gives confidence to every soldier 
 of a civilised army is his certainty that, though he is 
 ignorant of the plan of operations, yet such a plan 
 does in fact exist and does dictate every manoeuvre. 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 
 Whatever, therefore, the aspect of affairs in his own 
 part of the field may be, his instinct is, at all hazards, 
 to obey orders and carry out his own immediate 
 instructions. It is this rational subordination to 
 rational control which makes a civilised force well- 
 nigh irresistible. Discipline, cohesion, tenacity, the 
 power of concerted action, these are the great quali- 
 ties that spring from the rule of reason. It was the 
 lack of these qualities among the passion-tossed hosts 
 of the Arabs which was to prove their undoing. 
 Gradually as the Western nations emerged out of 
 barbarism and achieved the beginnings of unity, 
 they put on the warlike strength proper to a reason- 
 ing people ; and no sooner did they begin to develop 
 this strength, no sooner did reason and intellect 
 begin to show themselves in the discipline and 
 direction of armies, than the Saracen resistance 
 yielded before them. Decade by decade the 
 strength of Europe increased. Science introduced 
 a new and terrible efficiency in armament, but one 
 which cannot logically be separated from the men 
 who wield it, for it is indeed a part of them, a part 
 of that power of thinking which is their racial 
 characteristic and which manifested itself in 
 ordered ranks and a logical plan of campaign 
 before it went on to manifest itself in magazine 
 rifles and quick-firing guns. 
 
 For these developments, however, the Arab did 
 not wait. The race maintained its conquests only 
 so long as it was opposed by feebleness and con- 
 fusion. In the East it was struck down by the 
 Turk, while in the West the slow consolidation of 
 the Goths drove it steadily southward and the final 
 
The ARAB IN ARCHITECTURE 
 union of the states of Castile and Arragon rid Spain 
 finally of its presence. 
 
 What, then, we learn to distinguish as the chief 
 characteristics of Arab valour, from their rapid 
 conquests and rapid decline, is, first, an intense 
 excitability, a temperament in the highest degree 
 nervous, passionate and fiery, expressing itself in 
 movements of headlong speed and furious bursts 
 of energy ; and, secondly, under all this fire and 
 fury, a perpetual weakness and lack of tenacity and 
 endurance, due to the lack of rational cohesion in 
 them, which so wrought that nothing done by them 
 was ever continuous or firmly established, but that 
 all their designs partook of the character of whims 
 and blind impulses. 
 
 But if this is a true reading of the Arab in war it 
 will be true of him in other things also. And so I 
 think it is. His whole civilisation may be taken as 
 a further illustration of it. If that civilisation rose 
 and expanded with the rapidity of all Arab designs, 
 its abrupt and entire disappearance was not less 
 characteristic. Has the reader ever passed by the 
 scene of an overnight's display of fireworks and 
 noted the few relics — a rocket-stick or two, the core 
 of a catharine-wheel, a burnt-out cracker — which 
 are all that remains of so brief a glory ? Such was 
 the legacy, as such had been the brilliance, of the 
 display given by the Arabs. It is a habit at present 
 to magnify the importance of those odds and ends 
 of knowledge which we have succeeded in dis- 
 engaging from their motley accumulation of facts 
 and fancies. I need not here, however, overhaul 
 the doubtful catalogue. It is enough to point out 
 
 IS5 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 
 that whatever hints and suggestions we may have 
 utilised or adopted, the gap between the Arab as 
 thinker and the European as thinker has remained. 
 Mentally and intellectually we have always been 
 strangers ; and this estrangement has increased and 
 become absolute since the day when the West awoke 
 to the consciousness of its own powers and its own 
 mission in the world. At the time of the Renais- 
 sance, Arab knowledge and scholarship, Arab art 
 and poetry, had illumined and beautified the world 
 for some seven centuries ; yet when the awakened 
 mind of Europe turned to its own task and sought 
 about for such stimulus and co-operation as might 
 be available, all this culture and knowledge were as 
 practically ignored as though they had never existed. 
 I do not believe that in Symond's history of the 
 causes which led to the Renaissance the learning 
 of the Arabs is so much as mentioned. I do not 
 remember that in Pater's subtle analysis of the 
 currents of thought and feeling blended in Renais- 
 sance culture, the Arab influence is even distin- 
 guished. The mind of Europe turned back to and 
 claimed kinship with the minds of the thinkers and 
 poets and artists of Greece and Rome. The line of 
 descent of ideas and intellectual sympathy then 
 recognised has ever since been adhered to, and the 
 consequence is that the whole Arab episode has 
 dropped out of the life of Europe in the same way 
 that a dream or momentary hallucination drops out 
 of personal recollection. 
 
 And if we question more closely why this total 
 separation took place, and what there was so in- 
 compatible in essence between Arab and European 
 
 156 
 
THE ARAB IN ARCHITECTURE 
 thought, the answer is easily forthcoming. What 
 Europe awoke to at the Renaissance was the 
 value of intellectual culture, the value of thought 
 and reason. She went forward on these lines ; and 
 the chief characteristic of the civilisation which has 
 ensued has been that rational quality in it which, 
 whatever else it may have done, has secured for it 
 coherence and durability. But every step taken in 
 this direction was a step away from the Arabs. 
 Their mental activity never was of this kind. It 
 was not indeed activity of the intellect so much as 
 activity of the fancy and imagination, and although 
 it blossomed with incredible swiftness into many 
 imposing results, yet these were all infected from 
 the beginning with the instability of half-fanciful 
 creations. "Whatever real knowledge they pos- 
 sessed," is the conclusion of so sympathetic a critic 
 as Prescott, " was corrupted by their inveterate pro- 
 pensity for mystical and occult science. They too 
 often exhausted both health and fortune in fruitless 
 researches after the eHxir of life and the philosopher's 
 stone. Their medical prescriptions were regulated 
 by the aspect of the stars. Their physics were 
 debased by magic ; their chemistry degenerated into 
 alchemy, their astronomy into astrology." 
 
 If the reader will compare these eager but ill- 
 sustained conquests in the realms of knowledge 
 with those conquests in warfare which we were just 
 now considering, he will perceive their identity of 
 character. Both are marked by the same curious 
 combination of energy and instability. Both, by their 
 ostentation and the dazzling show they make, tempt 
 the historian to eloquent panegyrics, and both leave 
 
 ^S7 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 him in the long run puzzled and fumbling about for 
 tangible results. Mingled together and fused into 
 one, these attributes form the basis of the Arab 
 temperament; and, welling out into all his actions 
 and creations, stamp them with the same unique 
 character. Never will the reader, when once he 
 has learnt to recognise that feebly emphatic manner, 
 mistake its author. Let him look for the blind 
 emotional impulse, for the signs of furious haste 
 and impetuosity which arise from such a motive ; 
 and at the same time let him look for the weakness 
 and instability which result from the lack of clear 
 thinking and reasoning ; and wherever these traces 
 appear, whether in action, in science, or in art, he 
 may be sure the Arab has passed that way. 
 
 With this clue in our hands we shall not find it 
 difficult to interpret Arab architecture. *' The Arabs 
 themselves," Fergusson tells us, " had no architecture 
 properly so called," and it is true that in each country 
 they invaded and thereafter settled in, they made of 
 the architecture there existing a basis for their own 
 style of building. That is to say, they proceeded by 
 altering existing forms rather than by evolving a 
 homogeneous and consistent style of their own. 
 Yet these alterations of the Arabs, though diverse 
 in effect and resulting in totally different forms in 
 different parts of the Empire, are always curiously 
 similar in character. From the very first, from the 
 earliest days of Arab construction, their object, and 
 the only thing in which they were consistent, was 
 the breaking up and dislocation of the old-established 
 structural features. These features, the plain and 
 massive round arch and vault and the equally plain 
 
 »58 
 
THE ARAB IN ARCHITECTURE 
 and massive lintel and entablature, constituted the 
 essentials of the two great families of arcuated and 
 trabeated architecture then in being, and with regard 
 to both of these the main idea they express, or 
 perhaps I may better put it, the sensation with 
 which they are both impregnated and which they 
 convey to the onlooker, is the sensation of passive 
 strength, a strength, that is to say, not energetic 
 but full rather of quietude and a calm stability. 
 This feeling is strongest no doubt in the lintel, but 
 it is very strong also in the semicircular arch and 
 vault, and it was in the latter guise that the Arabs 
 had most to do with it. 
 
 From the outset they could not abide it ; indeed, 
 I know of no more convincing testimony to the 
 innate significance of form than this meeting between 
 all that was most serene in architecture and all that 
 was most fiery and impulsive in human nature, and 
 the instant fury of recognition which ensued. Not 
 for a moment were the Arabs in doubt on this 
 head. Perfectly conscious as they were of their 
 own ignorance in matters of art and eager to adopt 
 the knowledge of others ; with a natural antipathy, 
 moreover, to the arduous processes of architecture, 
 and unwilling on principle to build for themselves 
 when they could get any one else to build for them, 
 they yet, in regard to those structural features held 
 hitherto in universal honour, would make no terms 
 and listen to no suggestions. Towards all established 
 and organic forms they had the instinctive animosity 
 of the ordained iconoclast, the appointed destroyer. 
 The impulse to take to pieces and disintegrate, to 
 bite upon solids like a corrosive acid, was paramount 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 in them. This being so, the firmly wrougnt vaults 
 and arches of the Romanesque and Byzantine style 
 were naturally repugnant to every Arab feeling, and 
 with instantly aroused enmity they threw them- 
 selves upon these features and broke them up and 
 dislocated them. 
 
 The result is without parallel in the history of 
 architecture. Those solid and serene forms, in 
 their grave march through the centuries, seem, as 
 they enter on the Arab epoch, to be seized upon by 
 a force of an unprecedented kind, under the attack 
 of which they buckle and bend in all directions like 
 a child's toys. The prestige of the Greek genius, 
 the weight of Roman authority, went for nothing in 
 the cataclysm. Whoever is accustomed to connect 
 architectural and historical events can have, I 
 imagine, little difficulty in matching this structural 
 convulsion with its social equivalent. There is only 
 one event in history which has this character. The 
 new, strange force that crumpled up Greek and 
 Roman formations, what is it but another mode of 
 action of that frantic energy unloosed from the 
 desert which was shattering in all directions the 
 social fabric of the Eastern and Western Empires ? 
 
 But if the Arab attack is unanimous in its object 
 to break up the old quietness and strength, there is 
 very little unanimity in its own suggested alternatives. 
 A volume of illustrations would be necessary to 
 depict the multitudinous shapes to which the arch 
 alone was soon reduced. Stilted arches, horseshoe 
 arches, pointed arches, ogive arches, arches curved 
 and foliated and twisted into a thousand nameless and 
 inexplicable designs, arches inverted and standing 
 1 60 
 
Old Roman capitals and columns^ weak plaster con- 
 struction^ and arches well-nigh shapeless^ make this a 
 very adequate illust7-atio7i of Arab architecture 
 
 GREAT MOSQUE OF KAIRWAN (ARCADES) /. i6o 
 
THE ARAB IN ARCHITECTURE 
 
 on their heads, arches with voussoirs elaborately 
 tangled and interlaced, such are a few of the 
 varieties which occur more or less freely in all 
 Arab buildings. The racial mark set on this feature 
 alone is unmistakable, and every one susceptible to 
 the meaning of form may easily interpret it. The 
 imaginative excitability at work here is matched to 
 a nicety in all Arab affairs and ideas. It represents 
 the element, strongly mixed with the Arab civilisa- 
 tion, which differentiates it from that of the Western 
 races. What is striking about these Arab arches is 
 that they are not fashioned simply as structural 
 features, as Western arches are, that is to say with 
 regard to their structural use and purpose only, but 
 are used primarily to exercise the fancy upon ; the 
 shapes they take being recommended by no sort of 
 real use but being merely an outlet or safety-valve 
 for the whims and fantasies of the builders. But 
 this is precisely what we find in all Arab transactions, 
 and what in all things makes the difference between 
 the Arab and Western races. Arab science and 
 philosophy, Arab thought and learning are per- 
 meated through and through with this same fan- 
 tastical spirit. They none of them, any more than 
 the arches, exist for their own purposes only, but 
 are charged always with the same incorrigible 
 tendency to imaginative eccentricity. In the same 
 way if we compare the bare use of words by the 
 Western races and the Arabs, we shall find that the 
 former keep constantly in view the strict relation- 
 ship between the word and the fact, a practice which 
 gives to their mode of expression a certain simplicity 
 and moderation ; whereas the latter break away 
 
 L i6l 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 from this connection with fact and use words as the 
 vehicle for their own whimsical fancies. Let the 
 reader turn up a translation of any Arab description 
 of the beauties of Granada, and compare the vague 
 rodomontade and fantastical exaggeration into 
 which the language is wrought with the equally 
 wild fancifulness of the Alhambra arcades, and he 
 will acknowledge one of the most striking similitudes 
 between ideas and forms that the history of archi- 
 tecture has to show. 
 
 But we must look more closely yet into the 
 quality of this architecture if its value as a record 
 of human character is to be made clear. It was a 
 trait of all Arab action, as I just now said, that it 
 was spasmodic, impulsive and short-lived, that its 
 very ardour was always tinged with feebleness, and 
 that it had no sooner accomplished something, or 
 conquered and settled in some new country, than 
 symptoms of decay and disintegration began to 
 creep in, and all it had achieved began to fall to 
 pieces. It was so, too, in building. What Fergusson 
 says of the great works of the Moors of Spain, that 
 they seem to have been built for a momentary 
 enjoyment, and in accordance with a momentary 
 caprice, is true of all Arab buildings. It scarcely 
 needs to be pointed out that complicated forms 
 must always make for weakness in architecture, and 
 that those fantastic arches of which I was just now 
 speaking are open at a hundred points to the chances 
 of fracture, while from the irregularity of their con- 
 struction they are incapable of opposing an even 
 and steady resistance to the various thrusts and 
 pressures to which they are subjected. Frequently 
 162 
 
Heie ca?i be traced more fully the uneven surfaces and slovenly 
 arches strengthened with wooden ties. You can scarcely call 
 this architecture., it so lacks the architectonic sense 
 
 GREAT MOSQUE OP^ KAIRWAN (INTERIOR) A 162 
 
THE ARAB IN ARCHITECTURE 
 
 accordingly they show signs of giving way, and the 
 ties of wood or iron which are used to counteract 
 the lateral thrust of the arches, and the presence of 
 which is in itself a pretty sure indication of feeble 
 construction, are quite incapable of preserving 
 the regularity of their shape. Traces constantly 
 appear of a lack of uniformity and correctness of 
 outline. Here they bulge ; there they sag. This one 
 is evidently lop-sided ; that one is giving to its 
 neighbour's pressure. Such are the common and 
 usual mannerisms of Arab arcades, and they pro- 
 duce to a Western eye an immediate and painful 
 effect of feebleness and insecurity. 
 
 Another source of weakness is to be found in the 
 Arab instinct for appropriating the remnants of 
 older buildings. The plentifulness of Roman ruins 
 furnished an inexhaustible store just fitted to Arab 
 requirements. Eager but careless, it suited them far 
 better to steal columns and capitals from classic 
 structures than to cut and carve them for themselves. 
 Countless are the buildings, from the Great Pyramids 
 to Roman baths and palaces, which the Arabs 
 impartially rifled, and most of their mosques are in 
 large measure, many of them entirely, constructed 
 of such fragments. ** This of course involved the 
 hasty adaptation of all sorts of structural features 
 to positions which they had never been meant to 
 occupy, and this process of adaptation in Arab hands 
 is a very rough-and-ready one. Shafts are rudely 
 broken off to shorten them, or are propped on blocks 
 of stone to lengthen them. Again and again I have 
 noticed, in the mosques of Egypt and North Africa, 
 wedges of wood carelessly hammered in between 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 
 shafts and capitals to raise the latter to the right 
 level. Sometimes the capitals, chipped and defaced 
 as they mostly are, are set on upside down, the 
 cracks and rents in them being patched up with 
 coarse mortar. Evidently speed counts for more 
 here than durability. The fact that stones, designed 
 for the places they had to fill and accurately fitted 
 to them, would yield a more stable kind of architec- 
 ture than a lot of incongruous fragments eked out 
 with stray chunks of wood and stone was to the 
 Arabs of no consequence. Let the structure take 
 shape instantly, that was the great thing. So long 
 as it could be finished to-day, what did it matter if it 
 fell to pieces to-morrow ? 
 
 Many more indications might be mentioned of the 
 weakness which is inherent in all Arab structures, 
 and in particular I am tempted to linger over their 
 minute and complicated patterns of decorative 
 design, patterns which in their feeble restlessness 
 seem to embody the dreams of fevered pillows. I 
 will content myself, however, with referring to one 
 more, but that the most fundamental, symptom of 
 weakness. The reader will not need to be told, if 
 he takes any interest in the subject of architecture, 
 that the quality of the masonry, constituting as it 
 does the very substance of the structure and founda- 
 tion of all subsequent effects, is really the most 
 profoundly characteristic feature of the art, and, in 
 its quality, the surest indication of its builder's 
 architectural capacity. As for the quality of Arab 
 masonry, it is much what the insecurity of their 
 construction in other respects would have led one 
 to expect. Smooth cutting and exact setting are 
 164 
 
Look at the walls, doorways, arches of this sample of 
 native work. There is no constructive instinct in it 
 at all 
 
 VILLAGE IN THE SAHARA. SOUF p. 164 
 
THE ARAB IN ARCHITECTURE 
 never even attempted. Brickwork and stonework 
 are put loosely together, with joints so wide and 
 irregular, and filled with mortar so weak and 
 crumbling — moreover, they are so ill-adjusted and 
 unsymmetrical, with surfaces so untrue and inexact 
 — that they probably constitute the worst masonry 
 ever used by other than downright savages. It is of 
 a kind which seems to welcome dissolution, for it 
 exhibits a natural inclination to crumble and fall to 
 pieces of its own accord. The visitor to the oldest 
 Cairo mosques will be struck by the absence from 
 their decay of all that dignity and grandeur which 
 so often belongs to ruins. The word dilapidation, 
 indeed, rather than ruin, expresses theif condition, 
 A people of builders, we in the North know that 
 strength is the essence of all good architecture, and 
 what we admire in a ruin is the exhibition it affords 
 of such strength. We love to see, when all the softer, 
 ornamental and decorative qualities have long been 
 stripped away, how the shattered buttress and broken 
 arch retain to the last their fixed and stern rigidity. 
 And we are right, in that strength is the structure's 
 final justification. But it is a justification which 
 never attended on Arab efforts. The bulging surfaces 
 and crumbling brickwork, the mortar running in 
 powder out of the joints and the plaster peeling 
 from the walls, reveal, under time's patient analysis, 
 a total absence of that great attribute which is the 
 unfailing mark of constructive genius. The readiness 
 of this architecture to go to bits corresponds with 
 the haste with which it was put together. There is 
 nothing more fundamental than this. It is here we 
 strike the very bed rock of Arab character. Under 
 
 i6s 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 the painting and the carving, under the elaborate 
 stucco ornamentation and the endless caprice of 
 structural form, there is nothing after all but weak- 
 ness and insecurity. No solidity upholds these 
 fantastic imaginings and gives them reality and 
 endurance. Beneath the restless energy and eager, 
 nervous impulse we find, wrought into the very 
 texture of wall and arch, that profound instability 
 which never fails to attend upon all Arab under- 
 takings. 
 
 I think now that, if the reader will gather into an 
 inteUigible portrait his impressions of the Arab as 
 an historical personage on the one hand, and if on 
 the other he will collect into one visual image the 
 characteristic aspects and practice of Arab archi- 
 tecture, and then, if he will compare these two im- 
 pressions together, the impression of the Arab as he 
 lived and thought and acted and the impression of 
 the Arab as he designed and constructed, I think, I 
 say, that he will perceive between the two a likeness 
 not to be denied. That memorable onslaught of the 
 Arabs which swept before it the old social landmarks 
 in a common ruin is so closely echoed by the general 
 smash-up under his hands of established structural 
 forms that it is impossible not to see in both pro- 
 cesses a manifestation of one and the same force. 
 The whimsical civilisation which accompanied the 
 Arab dominion and broke into so wild a frenzy 
 of necromantic and astrological speculations is 
 paralleled with curious felicity in the odd and 
 freakish shapes, the flamelike mounting spirals and 
 fantastically curved and twisted arches, into which 
 the new architecture instantly developed. Further, 
 i66 
 
This ribald exhibition is the best example I can JiJid of 
 forms which have pai'ted with their last shred of 
 intellectual selfrespect 
 
 INTERIOR OF MOSQUE. CORDOVA /. i66 
 
THE ARAB IN ARCHITECTURE 
 when we examine more closely the texture and com- 
 position of this civilisation and this construction, 
 when we note the former's evanescent character, its 
 powerlessness to cohere socially, its rapid collapse 
 and total obliteration, and then compare it with the 
 crumbling masonry and tottering walls and columns 
 of Arab buildings, we must acknowledge that the 
 likeness, already remarked in outward action and 
 appearance, extends equally to the substance and 
 the inward nature. 
 
 Such, briefly indicated, is the interpretative value 
 which this style of building may come to possess, 
 if we approach it in a reasoning spirit. It is one of 
 those styles inspired by racial instinct and an uncon- 
 trollable impulse, the use of which is to instruct us 
 in the character of the people who evolved them. 
 And never did a race more need such elucidation 
 than the Arab. Traits which almost defy definition, 
 which turn the Arab of history into a phantom and 
 a myth, which in science, in philosophy, in poetry, 
 still subtly elude and puzzle us, we capture at last 
 in architecture. Here, arrested in its living image, 
 is that force which, bred of the desert, seemed 
 endowed with all the desert's fiery elan and restless 
 inconstancy. But here it baffles us no longer. At 
 last we can seize and handle it ; and its strange 
 mingling of frailty, fickleness and frantic energy 
 can be examined in concrete forms, or registered 
 by our kodaks and pasted into our albums. 
 
 167 
 
CHAPTER Vir 
 THE GOTHIC CONTRIBUTION 
 
 The energy of Gothic architecture and in what that energy 
 consists : The side-thrust of the arch : Its unsleeping activity : 
 The Gothic delight in this characteristic : The eagerness with 
 which the Gothic races exhibited and enhanced by all 
 possible means the activity of the arch principle : Loftiness 
 of their vaults : Dangerous character of side-thrusts which 
 they provoked and met : Buttresses and fljdng buttresses : 
 The visible conflict betwixt stone and human energy : 
 Participation of Gothic detail in the structural motive : Ribs, 
 mouldings, &c., used to indicate the arch pressures and 
 explain to the eye bow they converge and how they are 
 withstood : This structural activity the image of a racial 
 activity : Part played by the Gothic race : Roman apathy : 
 The quickening and vitalising influence of the barbarian 
 invasions : The Gothic ideal in life : The revitalising of the 
 old Roman system was the cardinal event in post-classic life : 
 How it worked out and formed the basis of the national 
 system : How having worked itself out- in life it was ripe to 
 embody itself in art : The twelfth century in England 
 and France : The moment of triumph of the Gothic ideal : 
 That triumph in all its completeness depicted in Gothic 
 architecture 
 
 OF all events in the history of architecture the 
 transition from Romanesque to Gothic is incompar- 
 ably the most striking and dramatic. It is made so 
 partly by the extraordinary contrast in character 
 between the old style and the new, between the 
 ponderous, solid and composed Romanesque and 
 the eager, animated Gothic, and partly by the deci- 
 sive and rapid way in which the incoming style set 
 to work to break up and displace the old. Mr. 
 i63 
 
THE GOTHIC CONTRIBUTION 
 
 Jackson, in one of his lectures, has called the change 
 a "revolution," and its violence and suddenness 
 seem to deserve the name. Moreover, it is a revolu- 
 tion which evidently implies a definite meaning and 
 purpose. Gothic is so powerful and decided a 
 style, it seems to know its own mind so clearly, 
 and to speak its thought with such conviction and 
 emphasis, that we feel it needs must have some 
 intelligible message to deliver to us if only we could 
 get at the meaning of it. 
 
 When, however, we turn to the writers and 
 lecturers on the subject, most of whom are profes- 
 sional architects, for an interpretation of this 
 message, we often have to confess a sense of 
 disappointment. Mr. Jackson tells us that the 
 whole change came about owing to the fact that 
 the builders of our Gothic cathedrals were obliged, 
 from motives of economy, to use small stones 
 instead of large ones. They had not the command 
 of money or slave labour that the Romans had, and 
 consequently were obliged to build with stones that 
 could easily be handled. From this necessity pro- 
 ceeded the forms of vaulting and construction best 
 adapted to such a material, and the towering Gothic 
 naves and choirs were the inevitable result. Such 
 an explanation has the merit of simplicity, but yet it 
 is not quite what we want. It is not such a solution 
 as any one who feels very deeply the personal 
 influence, as it may be called, of Gothic, will be 
 quite contented with. Nor is Mr. Russell Sturgis's 
 solution, though he has the majority of the architects 
 with him, much more satisfactory. According to 
 this theory " Gothic architecture was a natural 
 
 169 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 
 development of the Romanesque architecture of 
 Northern France," and its origin was *' wholly 
 constructional." That is to say it grew out of a 
 difficulty the Romanesque builders had in roofing 
 their naves and aisles, a difficulty which necessitated 
 and insured the introduction of the pointed arch. 
 As soon as this happened "the whole Gothic style, 
 including everything from the Cathedral of Rheims 
 to the smallest chapel, came from it as a matter of 
 course." 
 
 I sometimes, after reading such explanations as 
 the above, think that the poor British public is not 
 wholly to blame for its alleged, and I daresay rightly 
 alleged, indifference to architecture. We cannot all 
 be architects, and unless we are architects we cannot 
 reasonably be expected to excite ourselves very much 
 about the structural laws governing arches and 
 vaults, or the adaptability of masonry. If this is 
 all, if this explains Gothic, nine out of ten of us will 
 feel that the mistake we were under was in attaching 
 the importance we did to the subject. In explaining 
 away our difficulties Mr. Jackson and Mr. Russell 
 Sturgis explain away our interest. We thought we 
 were ignorant of something supremely worth know- 
 ing. We find we were ignorant of something which 
 to us, not being professional architects, is of no 
 importance. What wonder if, humbly accepting the 
 explanations given, we incline for the future to leave 
 architecture to the architects ? 
 
 And yet — and it says a good deal for the power of 
 Gothic that it should be so — we no sooner find our- 
 selves inside one of our great cathedrals than all 
 these explanations fall away from us. They are so 
 170 
 
THE GOTHIC CONTRIBUTION 
 
 inadequate, or rather they are so totally disconnected 
 with the cogent influence felt around us here, and 
 vouched for by the power and unanimity of the 
 architecture, that, however humbly we may have 
 acquiesced in them in the lecture-room or the book, 
 we quite forget them in presence of the architecture 
 itself. Or, if we remember them at all, it is to per- 
 ceive that they are not an explanation of ends but of 
 means. They do not explain " why " Gothic archi- 
 tecture arose, but *' how " it arose. If, we think, in 
 presence of the strength of purpose here prevailing, 
 the Gothic builders used small masonry, it was 
 because small masonry suited the purpose they had 
 in view ; if they developed certain structural laws it 
 was, again, because such laws lent themselves to the 
 purpose in view. The purpose of Gothic architec- 
 ture is a thing which, in its presence at least, we are 
 unable to doubt, and no explanation stands a serious 
 chance with us which does not address itself imme- 
 diately to the elucidation of that purpose, or which 
 thinks that it solves the question by an analysis 
 of the mechanical and material means by which 
 that purpose was carried out. A style so forcible 
 supposes the existence of a distinct thought. It 
 must have existed in the minds of its builders before 
 it existed as architecture. It was an idea before it 
 was a fact. 
 
 Thinking thus, it is needless to say that my own 
 humble notions concerning Gothic lead me not 
 so much to a minute examination of masonry or 
 vaulting as to the age and people among whom 
 Gothic had its origin. I will ask the reader by-and- 
 by to accompany me in an excursion into past 
 
 171 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 
 history; but before doing so, and that we may 
 know what we are in search of, I wish to draw 
 attention to one characteristic trait of the style, in 
 which, as it seems to me, its significance mainly 
 lies. 
 
 Gothic then, let the reader observe, is the only 
 architecture known to us, with one possible excep- 
 tion, which possesses the quality of energy. By 
 energy I mean strength in action as distinguished 
 from strength in repose. The only other style which 
 possesses some trace of this quality is the Arab, with 
 which I have already dealt. Apart from Arab archi- 
 tecture, however, Gothic is, so far as I know, its sole 
 possessor. All other styles exhibit strength in repose 
 only. Gothic alone exhibits strength in action. 
 
 That this may be understood we must begin by 
 pointing out that there is available in architecture 
 only one possible source of energy, energy being 
 defined as strength in action as distinguished from 
 strength in repose. There is only one structural 
 principle which exerts an active strength, and that is 
 the arch principle; the reason for this being that 
 the arch is the only constructive form which diffuses 
 a lateral pressure, and that lateral pressure cannot 
 be directly met and set at rest. 
 
 A word of explanation will make this clear. The 
 downward pressure of superincumbent weight acting 
 upon the arch frame tends to drive in the head of the 
 arch. But in order to effect this it has to force the 
 sides of the arch apart, and this attempt to force 
 the sides apart translates the original vertical pressure 
 into lateral thrust. To accept the first illustration 
 that occurs, if we were to take a child's wooden 
 172 
 
THE GOTHIC CONTRIBUTION 
 hoop and press down upon the upper rim, the sides 
 would, of course, expand. The vertical pressure 
 would be translated into lateral thrust. This is 
 precisely how the arch deals with its burden. In- 
 stead of transmitting the pressure in a direct line 
 to the ground, it radiates it in ^part horizontally 
 to left and right. This is the pressure that cannot 
 be met, for it is not possible to intercept a force 
 exerted across the line of gravity. And since it 
 cannot be met it is "persistently active, persistently 
 alive. The Indians have an acute saying to denote 
 this activity of the arch. " The arch," they say, 
 " never sleeps." Place a lintel of stone across two 
 uprights and you have an arrangement in passive 
 architecture. The lintel sleeps. The structure will 
 stand till the stones dissolve. But introduce arches 
 into a fabric and you have started forces you cannot 
 lay, forces which will go on day and night w^orking 
 at the disintegration of the building, because no 
 counterforce which the wit of man can devise can 
 be brought to meet that sideways thrust point-blank 
 and send it to sleep. Accordingly, as this sideways 
 pressure is the only conceivable force in architecture 
 which remains constantly active, and as the arch is 
 the only means by which this sideways pressure can 
 be exerted, it is clear that the arch is the source of 
 all activity in architecture ; or, if we define energy 
 as strength in action in contradistinction to strength 
 in repose, of all energy. 
 
 Having grasped this important fact, let us consider 
 what there was peculiar in the Gothic treatment of 
 the arch. The arch had had, in the West, a dis- 
 appointing career. The Greeks of the great age of 
 
 ^73 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 
 Greece detested it on principle. Its unintelligible 
 methods seemed consonant with no clear and simple 
 effects, with no precise intellectual definitions. Ideal 
 beauty had no part or lot in the accursed thing. On 
 the other hand the Romans used it freely, yet used 
 it in a shamefaced way, hiding it as much as possible 
 behind sham columns and architraves, and for the 
 most part forming it of one solid lump of concrete, 
 by which means the side-thrust was of course 
 neutralised and the utility of the arch impaired. 
 Whether, however, treated from the aesthetic or the 
 utilitarian standpoint, it was always felt, all through 
 the classic age and as long as the clear-cut Greek 
 taste prevailed, that there was something vulgar and 
 second-rate about the arch. Anything obscure or 
 involved was above all things odious to the classic 
 mind, and the arch, owing to its habit of distributing 
 pressure sideways, is undoubtedly compared to the 
 column and lintel, a very involved and structural 
 fsature indeed. In short the arch's lateral thrust 
 had been its reproach, the blot upon its scutcheon, 
 a defect which it was advisable to hide or avert 
 attention from as much as possible. ^^ 
 
 And although, as the scrupulous Greek ideal died, 
 the arch established itself in general use and came 
 out from behind its classic mask and vindicated its 
 claim to frank treatment, and although, on one 
 occasion, in S. Sophia, it was allowed to exhibit 
 its utmost capacity ; yet still it remained for 
 Gothic builders to actually exalt and glorify what 
 always had been considered its main defect.* For 
 this is what they set themselves to do. It wouk^ 
 * See note, page 206. 
 
 174 
 
f\e:ia5 
 cathedral 
 
 CR055 
 5ECTlOn. 
 
 SCALE OF 
 FEET. 
 J50 
 
 Showing the skeleton of Gothic construction and how 
 the side thrust of the tall nave vault is resisted 
 
 REIMS CATHEDRAL p 174 
 
THE GOTHIC CONTRIBUTION 
 
 seem that in the irrepressible energy latent in the 
 arch principle the new races recognised a quality 
 after their own hearts. At any rate, far from con- 
 cealing or fighting shy of it, they set themselves to 
 develop to the utmost this very characteristic, and 
 even to exaggerate and show off its waywardness 
 and intractability as if they were the most desirable 
 of virtues. In this dangerous vitality the new 
 builders proceeded to deal as the subject-matter 
 of their architectural style. They stimulated it by 
 degrees and from small beginnings. Liking its ways 
 they studied how to foster and increase it, and as it 
 grew and sent forth its strength they delighted in 
 the prowess of the only adversary they had met 
 whose energy equalled their own. Moreover, the 
 joy of the Gothic builders in this desperate encounter, 
 as in the case of the loftier-vaulted structures it really 
 came to be, is matched by their wonderful apprecia- 
 tion of every expedient and stratagem involved in 
 this kind of warfare. They handle these powers of 
 their own unloosing with an almost scornful famili- 
 arity, guiding and directing the tremendous pressures 
 of the arches to the props and supports beneath, 
 and as the vaults rise higher and their thrusts grow 
 more dangerous and ungovernable, inventing expe- 
 dients of unheard-of daring to counter and withstand 
 them. They carry on the fight, too, in the full day- 
 light, hand to hand with the stript stone, convinced 
 that, for the spectator as for themselves, it must 
 needs be the most fascinating of all spectacles; 
 exhibiting every thrust and parry, every push of the 
 tall roof and counter-buff of flying buttress spring- 
 ing in leaps to meet its enemy, in naked relief, and 
 
 '75 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 calling upon us to share in their excitement as they 
 " ride on the whirlwind and direct the storm " of 
 the fierce forces they have evoked. 
 
 Gothic, in short, one is tempted to say, is less a 
 style than a fight. When we stand to-day in a 
 Gothic interior, with the vaults of nave and tran- 
 septs meeting overhead, and the choir opening in 
 front like some great chasm in a cliff, and look 
 up at the tall, narrow roofs half hidden in shadow 
 abutting against each other, it may be we seldom 
 enough realise how strenuous and alive are the forces 
 which are here engaged. But difficult as it is to con- 
 nect the idea of activity with such rigid immobility, 
 yet really every portion of the structure is in violent 
 and furious action. The immense weight of the 
 lofty roofs, flung sideways by the thrust of their 
 vaults and threatening to burst the whole building 
 asunder, is met and checked by the pressure of 
 vaults setting in the opposite direction. Thrust 
 meets thrust in full career. The aisles and side 
 chapels push for all they are worth against the 
 strength of nave and chancel, while the thrusts too 
 high for them to deal with are encountered by the 
 lofty zigzags of the flying buttresses and guided to 
 earth. 
 
 The Gothic architects, then, delighted in the 
 vitality of the arch principle as it had never been 
 delighted in before. They were led on by this 
 delight to use the arch principle in a manner, with 
 an almost reckless daring and freedom, hitherto 
 unknown. But the difference between Gothic and 
 earlier arched styles is not sounded when we say 
 that Gothic used a principle daringly which those 
 176 
 
1 
 
 )^ , J! 
 
 ^bl£ li 
 
 To show what they were at, to exhibit nakedly the struc- 
 tural conflict in which they zvere e?igaged, was to the Gothic 
 builders a sufficing motive 
 
 BEAUVAIS CATHEDRAL. APSE p. 176 
 
THE GOTHIC CONTRIBUTION 
 
 other styles had used timidly. Let us remember 
 not only that every style to be genuine must be 
 based on a distinct structural principle, but that 
 purity of style consists in the keeping in touch, in 
 detail as well as main feature, with that original 
 structural principle. Style is the governing power 
 of a single motive or idea, felt all through a building, 
 working itself out in all kinds of manifestations, 
 decorative as well as structural, and so producing 
 throughout the whole a uniform sense of agreement 
 and harmony. For perfection of intellectual state- 
 ment no structural principle can approach the 
 column and Hntel, and the idea of exquisite articu- 
 lation which it supplies is wrought by the Greeks 
 through every stone of their characteristic style, 
 and impregnates every curve and Une and the 
 cutting of every moulding throughout the whole of 
 it. The whole of Doric is in direct relation to its 
 own original idea, and therein consists its purity. 
 But in the same way the whole of Gothic also is in 
 direct relation to its original idea. The vital energy 
 of the arch principle is not only developed as a 
 structural principle but it inspires with a single 
 impulse the whole array of lines, mouldings and 
 tracery ribs, of piers, of arches and vaults, and 
 turns them all into a harmonious expression of the 
 original structural intention. 
 
 This is what is new. This is what not only 
 reveals the pride and delight of the Gothic builders 
 in the principle they had taken up, but gives to the 
 resulting architecture, the uniform, homogeneous 
 character of a style, Gothic has been called the 
 linear style of architecture, and certainly the existence 
 
 M 177 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 
 and significance of the web of interior lines which 
 seems to uphold the structure — or rather to com- 
 pose the structure, for it is in these that the 
 strength and vigour appear to reside, the walls and 
 vaulting being no more than a stone veil or curtain 
 drawn over these supports — is the most recognisable 
 and salient trait of the style. These light and 
 sinewy lines pervade the whole structure. They 
 dart in sheaves from the floor. Passing through 
 the slight ligature of the capitals bound about 
 them they diverge into the mouldings of the aisle 
 arches or shoot up the clerestory walls to sup- 
 port the tracery of the nave roof. Arrived at 
 the springing of aisle and nave vaults these ribbed 
 lines diverge and spread fanlike over the vault- 
 surface, seeming in the elastic and vigorous frame- 
 work which they compose as much to embody 
 the function of the vaulting as to explain its 
 purpose. 
 
 Their real mission, however, is explanatory. It 
 is for them to emphasise, literally by underlining, 
 the structural theory of the architecture and to 
 draw attention to the forces active in it. They 
 have to exhibit and explain to us the direction and 
 play of these forces. They mark the sectional 
 joints of the vault, and point out where and how 
 the expanding pressure is guided to pier or buttress. 
 Save in the case of certain of the vaulting ribs (and 
 even this by some critics is held to be a fault of 
 principle scarcely countenanced by French masters 
 of the best period) they perform no essential 
 structural function. The piers would serve their 
 purpose if they were mere round pillars. The 
 
 178 
 
THE GOTHIC CONTRIBUTION 
 
 arches would support their burden equally well cut 
 with flat unmoulded soffits. The whole web and 
 system of lines might be destroyed without injury 
 to the building. Nevertheless this would destroy 
 the style of the building, for it would destroy the 
 means whereby the structural theory is carried out 
 in detail and exhibited in full clearness to the eye. 
 Behind those lines and ribs and sharp-drawn 
 mouldings are the invisible thrusts and pressures 
 of which we were just now speaking, which are 
 generated by the lofty vaults and arches and pene- 
 trate and govern the whole building. As the lines 
 on a map which mark the flow of tides when they 
 converge to a strait carry the eye with them in their 
 apparent motion, so do those lines which draw 
 from all quarters to concentrate in Gothic piers and 
 buttresses. They convey the same sense of motion, 
 of currents of vitality in active circulation. And 
 the currents are there. Study the zigzagging of the 
 vaulted ribs and you are studying the structural 
 scheme of the vaults themselves. Follow them as 
 they collect at stated points between the clerestory 
 windows, and you are following the direction of the 
 weight thrown from above on to the props and 
 supports beneath. Pick up the guiding lines of 
 nave and aisle arches and it is the structural action 
 of the arches themselves which is being explained 
 to you. In short the whole Gothic scheme of ribs 
 and mouldings, so irresistible to the eye, is only the 
 visible manifestation of the invisible forces actually 
 operating. It is a manifestation, in other words, of 
 the unquenchable energy of the arch principle, for 
 the action of arches and the manner in which their 
 
 m 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 
 thrusts act and react upon each other is the only 
 theme treated. 
 
 In composition, therefore, and detail both, carried 
 out through every part and portion of the structure* 
 the exhibition of vital energy in architecture is the 
 supreme motive of Gothic. But do not let the 
 reader imagine that it is a stone struggle only he is 
 watching in those dim cathedral vaults, that the 
 matter ends there, in those piers and arches, and 
 that any structural explanation of these will give him 
 the clue and meaning of it. No, the meaning must 
 be looked for elsewhere. The measure and equiva- 
 lent of the energy here displayed will be found in 
 the human energy of the race which brought forth 
 the style. If the Goths alone loved the unquench- 
 able vitality latent in the arch principle, if they 
 fostered and developed it, made it their plaything 
 and measured their strength against it, it was 
 because they alone sympathised with and under- 
 stood it, because they felt within themselves the 
 kindred impulse, because they werCf in a word, what 
 they were making. In their own image created they 
 these wrestling ribs and vaults. It is here the secret 
 lies of the overmastering attraction which the new 
 style possessed, not for the leaders and geniuses of 
 the age only — for this was not one of those purely 
 artistic products which claim special insight and are 
 great only in the hands of the great — but for the 
 mass of the people and the whole race. This is the 
 reason of the spontaneous and rapid growth of a 
 style which sprang up without effort and of its own 
 volition because it was an embodiment of racial 
 character and because men recognised in it and 
 1 80 
 
THE GOTHIC CONTRIBUTION 
 
 carried within their own hearts the clue to its 
 meaning. 
 
 It is to the authors of the new style we must have 
 recourse. We know that in the sphere of architec- 
 ture what Gothic energy did was to break up 
 Romanesque. But Romanesque, to adopt Professor 
 Banister Fletcher's delinition, " may be said to 
 include all those phases of Western European 
 architecture which were more or less based on 
 Roman art, and which were being carried out, in a 
 rough-and-ready way, in various parts of Europe, 
 from the departure of the Romans up to the intro- 
 duction of the pointed arch." All these round 
 arched styles are Roman in origin. They were, 
 with many variations, still carrying on the main 
 Roman traditions, and in fact between a Saxon, 
 Norman, or Lombardic church, with their general 
 massiveness and rounded arches and vaults, and the 
 baths and palaces of the classic age there exists, 
 under the differences, a fundamental similarity of 
 character which cannot be mistaken. On the other 
 hand, if these styles derived from Rome held their 
 own, as Professor Banister Fletcher says, ** from the 
 departure of the Romans up to the introduction of 
 the pointed arch," the new races, the barbarians 
 who overwhelmed Rome, could not during all that 
 time have produced a distinctive style of their own, 
 and we must consider Gothic as being, therefore, 
 their first distinctive style. So that the vigorous 
 attack of Gothic on Romanesque is the attack of the 
 great style of the barbarians on one still in the main 
 Roman. That is the architectural side of the matter. 
 If, however, we turn back some six or seven centuries 
 
 l8l 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 in European history we shall come to a more lively 
 representation of the same encounter, and one which 
 will, perhaps, throw some light on its architectural 
 aspect. 
 
 We shall be well within the mark in saying that 
 the Roman Empire was the greatest triumph of 
 admimstrative control known to history. The idea 
 of control, indeed, as opposed to the idea of freedom, 
 was its guiding motive. Gibbon, who held that 
 powers of self-government " will be first abused and 
 afterwards lost if they are committed to an unwieldy 
 multitude," and whose own ideas of government 
 were perfectly represented by the Roman polity, 
 has described with much appreciation her careful 
 measures for suppressing the dangerous spirit of 
 liberty. When that object had been attained, " when 
 the popular assemblies had been suppressed by the 
 administration of the Emperor," then indeed, " the 
 conquerors were distinguished from the vanquished 
 nations only as the first and most honourable order 
 of subjects." But the first business was to crush 
 out the spirit of local initiation and individual 
 freedom. '* In Etruria, in Greece and in Gaul," 
 says Gibbon, " it was the first care of the Senate to 
 dissolve those dangerous confederacies which taught 
 mankind that, as the Roman arts prevailed by 
 division, they might be resisted by union. Those 
 princes whom the ostentation of gratitude or gene- 
 rosity permitted for a while to hold a precarious 
 sceptre, were dismissed from their thrones as soon as 
 they had performed their appointed task of fashion- 
 ing to the yoke the vanquished nation. The free 
 states and cities which had embraced the cause of 
 182 
 
THE GOTHIC CONTRIBUTION 
 Rome were rewarded with a nominal alliance and 
 insensibly sunk into real servitude." 
 
 The centre of the whole system was Rome. 
 Thence all orders issued, thither all eyes were 
 turned. " The public authority was everywhere 
 exercised by the Ministers of the Senate and of the 
 Emperor, and that authority was absolute and with- 
 out control." By these means the spirit of liberty, 
 denied all exercise, was gradually exterminated, 
 and as it died down a series of gifts and privileges, 
 administered on a sliding scale according to the 
 docility of the subject, introduced a feeling of 
 loyalty and pride of quite another kind. The 
 " civis Romanus sum " pride of Roman citizenship, 
 so far from having anything to do with liberty and 
 independence, was bought by the sacrifice of liberty 
 and independence. It was the pride of serving or 
 assisting in some humble capacity, or at least of 
 having one's existence recognised by, and being on 
 friendly terms with, a tremendous and imposing 
 organisation which could bestow important benefits 
 or inflict terrible penalties. 
 
 The result of this system of control, pursued 
 patiently, tactfully and implacably for several 
 centuries, was that in Europe the spirit of liberty 
 was literally killed out. The individual was sunk in 
 the system, and when the system broke up, when 
 Rome herself was no longer capable of diffusing 
 energy and exercising control, the entire fabric 
 collapsed and fell to the ground. In the separate 
 parts of it there existed no life, no capacity for 
 independent action, and not the direct necessity, 
 not the instinct of self-preservation even, could 
 
 183 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 galvanise into such independent action those great 
 provinces which had been accustomed for centuries 
 to have all the strings that moved them pulled from 
 Rome. There is a singular example of this helpless- 
 ness, which is quoted by Guizot in one of his lectures, 
 and which occurs in a despatch addressed in the 
 year 418 by the Roman Emperor to the Prefect of 
 Gaul. I need not quote the despatch. The object 
 of it was to establish in Central Gaul, with its head- 
 quarters at Aries, a kind of representative govern- 
 ment which might rouse the country to its own 
 defence. The attempt failed owing to the fact that 
 none of the towns or provinces took the slightest 
 interest in it. No one went to Aries; no one 
 elected deputies. Rome had done her work too 
 well. The provinces had become so inured to 
 control that it had come to be the only form of 
 government conceivable to them. That they them- 
 selves, that their own individual inhabitants, could 
 exercise rights of their own, combine among them- 
 selves, provide for their own safety, and act on their 
 own initiative, was an idea they were not capable of 
 entertaining. 
 
 What 1 would ask the reader to pause and notice 
 here is the accuracy with which this character of 
 the Empire is reflected in its architecture. That 
 architecture is usually held to testify to the greatness 
 and power of Rome's dominion. It does so, no 
 doubt, but it reveals also the nature of that dominion. 
 Its chief characteristic is its deadly and vast mono- 
 tony. Local conditions count for nothing in it. 
 It is impossible to trace the slightest record, in 
 these theatres and amphitheatres and temples and 
 184 
 
THE GOTHIC CONTRIBUTION 
 
 triumphal arches, which adorned the Empire from 
 one end to the other, of thecharacter of the inhabitants 
 of that particular country or neighbourhood. The 
 likes and dislikes of the people, national usages and 
 customs, traditions or superstitions, the influences 
 of climate or of scenery, nay, the influence of time 
 itself, all go for nothing in Roman architecture. It 
 suggests the idea of having been turned out by some 
 great central factory and forwarded to the different 
 parts of the Empire as need arose. Near the little 
 village of Sbeitla, overlooking from the southern- 
 most spurs of the Aures the distant expanse of the 
 Sahara, I once came quite unexpectedly upon the 
 well-preserved remains of several of these Roman 
 temples. In that land of clear skies and fierce heat, 
 of palm-trees and tents and melancholy wastes of 
 sand, one might expect the local genius to reveal 
 itself. But no ! these columns and architraves and 
 friezes, these ugly composite capitals and the solid 
 blocks of masonry would have been equally in place 
 in the Roman Forum. Even the quality and tricks 
 of workmanship, the use of the drill as a cheap and 
 expeditious means for emphasising the sculpture, 
 and the loading of the architraves with misplaced 
 ornament, followed the Roman model. Nothing is 
 to be learnt here of the history of Sbeitla or of 
 its inhabitants. On all those matters of human 
 character and human life of which architecture has 
 usually so much to tell us, Roman architecture is 
 dumb. It knows nothing of man and can tell us 
 nothing of him. It can utter but one word, and 
 that word is " Rome." 
 
 Here, then, is. visibly at work in architecture the 
 
 »85 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 
 same influence which was so strongly operative in 
 life' — the influence of routine and cut-and-dried 
 official system. It was, of course, inevitable that the 
 system which had been fatal to freedom in life 
 should be fatal to it in art also ; but what is 
 particularly significant, and what is evident from 
 the very plentifulness of these remains and their 
 stringent uniformity of character, is the pride the 
 people took in their own servitude. There was no 
 hardship in the matter. The turning out of these 
 endless, dull, acanthus-leaved capitals, which have 
 since adorned or disfigured so many churches and 
 mosques, evidently seemed to the sculptors of that 
 age the only legitimate exercise of their trade. Art 
 is the interpreter of life, and what could their art do 
 more for them than express their entire acquiescence 
 in the great administrative system which had so 
 completely absorbed them ? One may fairly con- 
 jecture that the arch, gateway or temple of Roman 
 pattern must have been as coveted by the provincial 
 towns of the Empire as the charters and privileges 
 which attested their freedom were by our later 
 English boroughs. This architecture, with its im- 
 mense dullness and perpetual iteration is, in short, 
 no symptom of the active tyranny of a despotic 
 government, but of the passive tyranny of routine. 
 It suggests not oppression but apathy. 
 
 It was upon this scene of unparalleled listlessness 
 and torpor, over which officialism seemed to have 
 woven a kind of enchantment, that the hordes of 
 barbarism descended. In mass behind mass, Goth 
 and Visigoth, and Ostrogoth and Hun, they gathered 
 along the Eastern frontier like ridges of toppling 
 X86 
 
THE GOTHIC CONTRIBUTION 
 
 thunder-clouds at the close of a stifling day. They 
 were the judgment Rome had heaped up for herself^ 
 The individual energy and initiative, which the 
 Empire had slowly and carefully crushed out in its 
 own citizens, now rose up from without to destroy 
 it. It has been usual to credit these wild forefathers 
 of ours with profound, mystical intuitions, to imagine 
 their dark and troubled spirits lit with strange gleams 
 from the supernatural world, and to suggest that 
 they were visited in their frozen forests by impulses 
 of deeper birth than fall to the lot of average 
 humanity. Such may have been the case : indeed, 
 their creative work, as soon as they undertook it, 
 clearly proves that to some extent it was the case. 
 But it is impossible to observe their movements and 
 consider the effect of their actions without perceiving 
 that the instincts which really in the main governed 
 their conduct were by no means of a mystical or 
 imaginative kind, but, on the contrary, intensely 
 practical and to the purpose. Races of robust stock 
 seem, like individuals of the same character, to go 
 through a stage where virile efficiency is a sufficing 
 ideal ; when the physical qualities of strength, fleet- 
 ness, endurance, and the moral qualities of fortitude, 
 courage and daring are the only ones worth having. 
 The ideal is an almost purely physical one ; the only 
 virtues acknowledged being those which tend to the 
 free and effective display of physical efficiency. It 
 was thus with the barbarians. Their life was action, 
 and they valued exclusively, or at least primarily, 
 such qualities as took effect in action. On the other 
 hand, owing to this very restriction of ideas, it is 
 obvious that the barbaric tribes must have been, 
 
 187 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 as indeed we know they were, altogether lacking in 
 the power of organisation. In their migrations and 
 campaigns we perceive the motion of hordes, not 
 moved by disciplined authority, but by the unanimity 
 of will ot individuals all equally fierce and enter- 
 prising. So that we may say the influx of the new 
 races into the Roman world was an attack on a system 
 of organisation pure and simple by individual energy 
 pure and simple. 
 
 What followed immediately was the total overthrow 
 and smash-up of organisation. What followed by 
 degrees was the re-establishment and re-starting of 
 society on a new basis, the basis of individual 
 initiative and the recognition of the rights it involved. 
 The coming of the new races poured a fresh tide of 
 vitality through the Empire ; the old listlessness and 
 torpor disappeared and free play for the individual 
 became the ruling principle of life. This is the 
 change which by-and-by is to transcribe itself 
 with literal exactness into architecture. This tide 
 of vitality is to be poured into column and arch, 
 and we are to see a style still Roman and passive, 
 transfigured, as here we see society, with startling 
 suddenness, into a style expressing in every line a 
 consuming energy. 
 
 But why, 1 can imagine the reader objecting, did 
 not all this happen at once ? When the life that had 
 made Roman architecture what it was went, why did 
 not the architecture go with it ? When the new 
 inspiration came in, why did not its appropriate 
 architecture follow it ? Why did half a dozen 
 centuries elapse between the change in life and the 
 change in architecture ? An obvious, though not a 
 i8S 
 
THE GOTHIC CONTRIBUTION 
 
 complete answer, is to be found in the fact that the 
 barbarians were barbarians, and incapable therefore 
 of putting their ideas into stone ; but a moment's 
 consideration of the nature of art itself will give us 
 a reason which will perhaps lead us to something 
 more definite. 
 
 Art is always a somewhat mysterious subject to 
 deal with, but we may say this about it with some 
 confidence, that it never manifests itself with certainty, 
 and least of all in the shape of a great architectural 
 style, until it has behind it a combined and united 
 effort. It has in it something of the nature of a 
 solution of life's problem. So far as the particular 
 race which creates it is concerned, it is an answer to 
 the question how to live. And for this very reason 
 a great creative epoch in art never can occur where 
 society is uncertain of itself and distracted in its 
 aims. Art being the expression of a solution, it 
 follows that the solution must be reached in life 
 before it can be expressed in art. There have been 
 very few great creative epochs in art. The Greeks, 
 we may almost say, lived in such an epoch. But to 
 the Greeks was given in their own way, a finite way 
 perhaps, an extraordinarily clear perception of what, 
 so far as they were concerned, life meant. The 
 Italian Renaissance was another creative epoch, 
 much less sure of itself, it is true, than the Greek, 
 but still for the time being assured that in its novel 
 sense of intellectual expansion lay the answer to hfe's 
 problems. For the time being. Renaissance art did, 
 more or less adequately, express the life of its age, 
 and was therefore genuine. 
 
 But, further, all manifestations of art, even those 
 
 189 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN ; 
 quite minor and subordinate ones which are more 
 than fashions, but less than genuine creative epochs, 
 demand an effort of a certain weight and unanimity 
 to back them. For example, such movements as 
 the Louis Quinze and Louis Seize periods bear wit- 
 ness to the influence which at that time was supreme 
 in France, the influence of an idle and luxurious 
 upper class detached from yet dominating the life of 
 the nation. So, too, if the English aristocratic style 
 of art of the same time was less thorough than the 
 French, it was because the aristocratic ideal had less 
 completely gained a hold upon English than upon 
 French life. If such minor manifestations as these 
 seem trivial when compared with the great art epochs, 
 the reason is to be found in the fact that they inter- 
 pret the life, not of a people but of a class. Their 
 importance is less to the degree in which the convic- 
 tion of a single section of society is w^eaker than the 
 conviction of the whole of it. In each case the 
 power and sincerity of the movement in art is deter- 
 mined by the extent to which the idea inspiring it 
 has already possessed itself of life and penetrated 
 life. An idea that has collected a great deal of life 
 will inspire a robust art. An idea that has collected 
 but a little life will inspire a feeble art. But always 
 the idea must have established itself in life, and 
 made good its hold upon life before it can manifest 
 itself in art. 
 
 The reader will see why I emphasise this. In 
 Gothic architecture the Northern nations have had 
 their, so far, one and only great creative epoch. It 
 deserves that title, for it had behind it, if ever art 
 had, the conviction of a whole people. At the same 
 190 
 
THE GOTHIC CONTRIBUTION 
 
 time the important thing to remember about it is 
 that the idea it embodies, before it could translate 
 itself into art, was bound to work itself out in life, 
 and thoroughly possess itself of and penetrate life. 
 Accordingly, what we are concerned with imme- 
 diately is the working out of the Gothic ideal in life. 
 That was the problem at which the new races were 
 labouring for six centuries and more. 
 
 What that ideal was we know. In his '' Democracy 
 and Reaction " Mr. Hobhouse tells us that " what is 
 spontaneous in a people [meaning by the phrase 
 what is instinctive and primitive, a racial charac- 
 teristic in them] is always the source of life, the 
 well-spring of the secret forces which recruit jaded 
 civilisation." What, in this sense, was spontaneous 
 in the northern invaders and destined to recruit the 
 jaded civilisation of the Empire was, as I have 
 already pointed out, the intense personal vitality 
 and energy in which the new-comers were so rich. 
 Their mission to the West was to vindicate the 
 primary truth that man himself is greater than any 
 routine or system of his creation ; that he is to wield 
 such systems, not they him. To a world lapped 
 and lulled in routine they came to preach the rough 
 gospel of individual initiative and freedom of action. 
 This was their unconscious doctrine, and they 
 preached it in their own straightforward way not 
 ineffectively. So long as tearing up and clearing 
 away was their cue, they had but to let themselves 
 go. But to clear the ground is one thing : to rear 
 and reap the crop another. It was the process of 
 constructing a society and evolving a scheme of 
 government containing as its vital principle their 
 
 191 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 
 own characteristic theory of free play for the in« 
 dividual that took the time. 
 
 The difficulties before them were enormous. For 
 four or five centuries after their first appearance the 
 elements of which the new society was to be com- 
 posed were never at rest. Fresh influxes of .bar- 
 barians force their way westward. No sooner does 
 a settlement, a definite form, begin to emerge out of 
 the chaos than it is broken up and swept away by 
 a new combination and arrangement of its material. 
 Moreover, the invaders had not only the refractori- 
 ness of society, but their own individual refractori- 
 ness to order. The very idea of an organic society 
 presupposes in its members a certain power of 
 generalising, of deducing abstract principles, of 
 looking at life impersonally ; powers which the 
 Gothic races, in the first centuries of their settle- 
 ment, certainly never possessed. Their ideal of an 
 unobstructed physical energy would probably have 
 meant in those early days, translated into a social 
 principle, little more than the liberty to indulge in 
 their own furious whims and passions. It had to 
 go through a long course of tempering and refining 
 before it could emerge as a principle of national 
 freedom capable of forming a social bond. 
 
 Many forms of government came and went in the 
 interval ; many experiments in the ordering and 
 casting of society were tried and failed. None 
 of these experiments embodied the Gothic idea ; 
 none of them involved the unanimity necessary to 
 back up a creative epoch in art. In what place 
 and what time in Europe from the fifth to the 
 twelfth centuries can we imagine such an epoch 
 192 
 
THE GOTHIC CONTRIBUTION 
 occurring? What would it have had to say? 
 What would have been the solution it would have 
 proposed ? Can we imagine it appearing during 
 the reign of Charlemagne, that rule of military 
 despotism over social anarchy ? Or during any of 
 the inflexible tyrannies that make up the history of 
 the German Empire ? Or in a Europe disintegrated 
 by the feudal system and parcelled out into a 
 number of estates, each one the theatre of miniature 
 revolt and insurrection ? Can we lay our finger any- 
 where during all these centuries on a society of 
 which we can say that it knows its own mind, that 
 it is animated by a definite conviction, that it has a 
 message to deliver, a thought to utter ? Evidently 
 we cannot. During these centuries the social 
 material is either in violent commotion, or, if settled 
 or settling, has not yet found the law of its nature. 
 It has nowhere yet put into life the principle it was 
 charged with. Under such circumstances it would 
 be obviously impossible for a great creative epoch 
 in art to occur. The makings of such an epoch 
 are non-existent. 
 
 We must pass on until we find these makings. 
 There is not the least doubt as to the moment of 
 their establishment. It is a trait of the Gothic spirit, 
 as much in life as in art, that it is obvious and 
 unmistakable in all its doings. The barbaric ideal 
 was no profound and subtle affair, difficult to track 
 and analyse, but an outward matter of action and 
 politics. Its natural tendency was to work itself out 
 into a social and political system safeguarding the 
 rights and liberties of the individual, and its ability 
 to do this is what marks its establishment in life. 
 
 N 193 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 The systems we have glanced at, of Charlemagne and 
 others, were directed to checking this tendency. 
 Their whole aim and object was to prevent the new 
 ideal from working itself out into life at all. The 
 tradition inspiring them as governments was the 
 tradition of the extinct Empire. 
 
 It is not until we come to the national movements 
 of the twelfth century that we find these obstructions 
 overcome, and the Gothic thought victoriously 
 asserting itself. The ideas of the common weal — 
 of public right, of a king not despotic but as "grand 
 juge de paix du pays," of liberty and justice as 
 inalienable possessions of the people — now for the 
 first time makes its appearance as a basis of govern- 
 ment. It is the same old idea that the barbarians 
 have always had, that they brought with them out 
 of their forests, that Rome made way for. But it 
 has expanded and grown, it has been adapted to the 
 needs of a community, and it is expressed now, not 
 in its raw form of individual licence, but as a social 
 and national bond. In a word it has passed into 
 life, it has a united effort behind it, it has become 
 capable of artistic expression. 
 
 That expression followed soon enough ; indeed, 
 both these final acts, the assertion of nationality and 
 the rise of the national style, are executed with all 
 that decision which belongs to the Gothic character. 
 Green tells us that the reign of Henry II. "marks the 
 period of amalgamation when neighbourhood and 
 traffic and intermarriage drew Englishmen and 
 Normans rapidly into a single people." He adds, 
 "a national feeling was then springing up before 
 which the barriers of the older feudalism were to be 
 194 
 
THE GOTHIC CONTRIBUTION 
 
 swept away." In referring the rise of nationalism 
 to this time Green endorses the common decision 
 of history. What is important to note is that its 
 rise signified the recognition of public liberty as 
 a governing principle. The liberty of the citizen 
 was the foundation on which the European nations 
 have been built. The "national feeling" was the 
 consciousness of freedom as a bond of union 
 among the people. There is no need to insist on 
 this. The signs of developing nationality are un- 
 mistakable. The growth all over the country of free 
 towns with self -won rights and liberties and charters, 
 the rise of the influence of the commons, the blows 
 aimed at the throttling influence of feudalism, are 
 among the unmistakable signs that the struggle 
 towards national unity was a struggle to assert the 
 supremacy of the idea of freedom in life, and to 
 safeguard the rights and Hberties of the individual 
 citizen. In short, the fact is, I think, clear that 
 nationalisation was the final vindication of the 
 Gothic ideal as a matter of life ; so that if, having 
 once possessed ourselves of the dominant charac- 
 teristic of the barbaric races, we were asked to 
 determine the moment when that characteristic 
 established its control over life, we should have no 
 hesitation, as we reviewed the succession of events 
 from the fifth to the twelfth centuries, in laying our 
 finger on the rise of national consciousness and 
 saying, " This was the moment." 
 
 And in pointing to the moment when the Gothic 
 ideal came to the front in life, we point also to the 
 moment when it declared itself in art. The reign 
 of Henry II., when the Gothic idea worked itself 
 
 ^95 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 
 out in life, lasted from 1154 to 1189. The new style 
 of architecture in which that idea embodied itself 
 dates from the same time, that is from the last 
 twenty years of the [century. Fergusson, accepting 
 Canterbury as the first example, gives the year 1175 
 as the date of its first appearance. Mr, Russell 
 Sturgis and other authorities give 1190; others 
 1 185. Such minute discrepancies are immaterial. 
 We shall be safe in referring the event to about the 
 end of the reign of Henry II. We shall be safe, 
 that is, in saying that the manifestation in art of the 
 Gothic idea came directly it felt the weight and 
 unanimity of the national impulse behind it. 
 
 But, I dare say it will be objected, Gothic did not 
 have its birth in England : France was the nursery 
 of the new style. Well, if we turn to France we 
 shall find the same change in society occurring there 
 and the same working out in life of the Gothic 
 principle going on there as we see in England, only 
 declaring itself, as it ought to do, rather earlier. 
 French historians date the rise of national sentiment 
 in France from the reign of Louis le Gros, just as 
 confidently as Green dates it in England from the 
 reign of Henry II. All the forces which brought 
 about that development, the rise of free communes, 
 the breaking up of feudalism, the change in the 
 character of kingship from a military despotism to 
 what Guizot calls " the guarantee and protector of 
 public order, of universal justice and of the common 
 interest," occurred a little earlier in France than in 
 England. These things give to the reign of Louis 
 le Gros its " caractere tout a fait nouveau," as Guizot 
 describes it, among the hitherto existing govern- 
 196 
 
THE GOTHIC CONTRIBUTION 
 
 ments of Europe, and incline French historians to 
 date the history of France as a European nation 
 from that time. 
 
 Accordingly we find this thought which the bar- 
 barians brought with them into the West of the 
 sacredness of individual effort and its right to free 
 play assuming control of life and constituting a 
 national bond in France just in the same way as it 
 does in England. France, however, takes prece- 
 dence. The Gothic idea had its collective impulse 
 behind it in France before it had in England, and 
 consequently found its artistic expression there 
 earlier than it did with us. Louis le Gros reigned 
 from 1108 to 1 137. French Gothic may be dated 
 from the foundation of the Abbey of St. Denis in 
 1 144. 
 
 But French Gothic is not only earlier than 
 English ; it is also purer. What France shows us is 
 that the national idea is not to be thought of in 
 connection with defined frontiers and the aspect of 
 the completed national form. A nation is not a 
 mere mass of territory of a certain extent and shape. 
 This material definition is subsequent, and its 
 ultimate form more or less accidental. The unifying 
 influence is a common idea acting as a common 
 bond, and ' in France we see this action working 
 quite independently of territorial extent and dimen- 
 sions. France does not attain the outward aspect 
 and form of a nation until long after England has 
 attained it; but the principle is active, the pull is 
 being exerted, earlier in France than in England. 
 
 Thus at the time of our Gothic outburst in 1190 
 England was to all appearances an already united 
 
 197 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 nation, while fifty years earlier, when that outburst 
 occurred in France, the French kingdom consisted 
 only of a little nucleus round the I le-de- France, a 
 patch of territory not half as big as Ireland. Up to 
 some thirty years before that date nothing had fore- 
 told that that particular spot of earth was cradling a 
 great idea. The Capets had possessed hardly a 
 semblance of authority over the feudal princes of 
 the rest of the country, and their own independence 
 was perpetually threatened by Norman aggression. 
 It was Louis le Gros, as we have already seen, or 
 rather, to be exact, it was his minister, Suger, who 
 first joined the kingly office to that instinct which 
 was then working merely as a social force among 
 the rising communes, and thus turned it into a 
 governing ideal and made a national bond of it. 
 From that moment an influence of a new and 
 decisive character emanates from this centre. The 
 kingdom seems endowed suddenly with a power 
 of assimilation. Its influence is magnetic, and it 
 increases and extends itself not so much by con- 
 quest as by attracting the surrounding provinces 
 to itself. 
 
 And what is further worth observing in this 
 national extension in France is this, that although 
 the same struggle to realise the same ideal was being 
 carried on by the French people outside the national 
 area as within it, yet nothing of this could take effect 
 in art, or vent itself in appropriate architectural 
 expression, until national concentration acted upon 
 it. I have tried the experiment of tracking and 
 gauging this extension of the national idea by draw- 
 ing a map showing the order of the rise of Gothic 
 198 
 
THE GOTHIC CONTRIBUTION 
 
 buildings. The first example occurs appropriately 
 in the royal chapel at St. Denis, close to Paris. Then 
 we have Notre Dame in Paris itself, followed by 
 Senlis, Rheims, Chartres, Rouen ; and the movement 
 spreads till we have some score of buildings 
 registered, and our map looks like a target with the 
 marks of shots scattered over it, all aimed at, and 
 thickest nearest to the bull's-eye, Paris. What with 
 political complications and the uncertainty of the 
 date of buildings, it is not, perhaps, practicable to 
 trace with exactness the national progress in the 
 national style. But we can at least say with certainty 
 that the new style in architecture had its birth in the 
 very centre of the little national vortex, that it came 
 into being with the national idea, and from this 
 centre, hand in hand with the national idea itself, 
 overflowed the neighbouring provinces. 
 
 French Gothic is, then, more a Gothic of the pure 
 idea than English. English Gothic shows in itself 
 something of those mixed influences of contact and 
 blind force which went to make the nation, and which 
 were due to the arbitrary mould within which the 
 national impulse had to work. The English races 
 were not drawn by a central attraction only. They 
 were drawn, but they were hammered and pounded 
 as well. And their national architecture shows this. 
 Not only is it not so logical, not so penetrated by the 
 spirit of energy proper to the style, not only does it 
 fail to carry out the meaning it was meant to carry 
 out with the completeness and absoluteness of 
 French Gothic, but you cannot in the same way 
 follow its progress from the centre and observe it 
 keeping pace with the spread of the idea. You can 
 
 199 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 say of English Gothic that it arose with, or imme- 
 diately after, the sense of nationality, following it as 
 sharply and abruptly as the report follows the 
 explosion. And perhaps this is enough to say. But 
 with French Gothic you can say more. You can 
 say that it springs into being with the sense of 
 nationality at a given point, and that, as the sense 
 of nationality spreads, as the struggling, unruly and 
 distracted social elements gather round it and 
 concentrate and combine into an ever-enlarging 
 homogeneous body, so, too, Gothic extends its sphere 
 of operations, everywhere answering to, and made 
 possible by, the bond of national cohesion. The 
 conclusion pointed to is that just in so far as the new 
 races could work out their ideal as a matter of life 
 by making a national bond of it, was it granted 
 to them to give it utterance in its appropriate 
 architecture. 
 
 Moreover, if we interpret Gothic architecture in 
 this sense, as the embodiment in its moment of 
 triumph of the great thought with which the new 
 races had invigorated the old world, we shall the more 
 readily sympathise with the extraordinary popular 
 zeal and enthusiasm which the new style excited 
 and understand the rapidity with which it established 
 itself. Added to much that is unique in it, Gothic 
 has this, that it was built, so one may almost say, 
 without the help of architects. In spite of the 
 appalling difficulties to be overcome, and the daring 
 innovations involved, any one could build Gothic. 
 The people needed no teaching in the style. They 
 seemed already to know all about it, and the archi- 
 tecture consequently rose, not slowly and by degrees, 
 
 200 
 
This gives a fairly adequate idea of the continuity of 
 Gothic forms ^ and the sense of concerted energy and 
 movement which that contimiity produces 
 
 FRENCH CATHEDRAL CHOIR p. 2co 
 
THE GOTHIC CONTRIBUTION 
 
 but spontaneously, with one impulse, rather Hke the 
 uplifting of some tremendous chorus than the slow 
 setting of stone upon stone. 
 
 All this, I say, seems natural and intelligible if we 
 regard the style as the visible presentment of the 
 people's own profoundest convictions and deepest 
 racial characteristics. That art comes easily which 
 expresses the thought that has thoroughly penetrated 
 life. It is there the difficulty lies — not in the artistic 
 expression, but in the accumulation of the weight of 
 conviction behind it. The obstructions in the way 
 of Gothic were overcome and its accomplishment 
 made easy and inevitable, not by the builders and 
 masons of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but 
 by a score of preceding generations of our rugged 
 forefathers who held by the instinct of their race, 
 and, in the face of many obstacles, worked their 
 thoughts slowly out into a practicable scheme of life. 
 These were the real Gothic architects. The thought 
 that had attained to such a hold on life as theirs 
 had fell into stone almost of its own accord. The 
 resulting architecture was the expression of a solution 
 already arrived at. 
 
 I cannot therefore but think that this extraordinary 
 transformation — the rise of Gothic out of the old 
 Romanesque style — is an event which admits of a 
 more satisfying explanation than is to be derived 
 from a mere examination of the material used, or 
 the laws by which that material is disposed. The 
 fascination of architecture, as of all art, lies in its 
 application to life. Nor is this a difficult or subtle 
 operation, or one involving any special technical 
 knowledge. Any one who compares the vigorous 
 
 201 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 vitality of an English borough of the thirteenth 
 century with the torpor and apathy of a town of the 
 Roman Empire, will have presented to his mind at a 
 single view the full effect of the change wrought by 
 the new idea which the Gothic races had introduced 
 into life. He will easily perceive that, though this 
 idea might work itself out in many ways and many 
 directions, yet always the root was the same, and 
 strikes back to that ideal of personal energy which 
 the new races had burst into the West with centuries 
 before. But any one, too, who looks from the 
 contrast in life to the contrast in architecture must 
 see that the same change is embodied here, that the 
 listless apathy of the Roman town is embodied in the 
 buildings it erected, while the personal, human energy 
 of the Gothic races breathes in every line of their own 
 peculiar style. To realise that connection, to perceive 
 the intimate relationship between the character of 
 an age and the forms into which it casts itself, is to 
 infuse into the subject of architecture a vitality of 
 interest which no technical explanations can obscure 
 ior a moment. Between the forms and shapes of 
 architecture and the instincts and impulses of human 
 character there exists a natural affinity or aversion 
 according as those forms and shapes embody or fail 
 to embody such human instincts. To search for 
 the origin of forms, as forms, is a wearisome and 
 sterile task. Let us rather search for the dominant 
 thought of an age, and accept that as the origin of 
 the appropriate forms in which it will inevitably 
 clothe itself. The greater the creative epoch and 
 the stronger its convictions, the more easily and 
 irresistibly will it seize upon the forms appropriate 
 202 
 
THE GOTHIC CONTRIBUTION 
 to such convictions and the less need have we of 
 scientific explanation or research. 
 
 I would add one word of qualification. Do not 
 let the reader suppose that in what I have written I 
 imagine myself to have ^'accounted for" and 
 exhaustively explained Gothic architecture. That 
 is far from being the case. One whole side of the 
 subject, the deep devotional and contemplative 
 instinct which runs through mediaeval life, so 
 curiously contrasting with its vigorous energy of 
 action, which expressed itself in life in the yearning 
 after monastic seclusion and in art in the solemn 
 glowing tints of the stained glass of the period — 
 this side of the subject I have not in the present 
 volume even touched upon. All I have aspired here 
 to do is to take what seems to me the most character- 
 istic and vital trait in the Gothic epoch and to show 
 in what degree that motive inspires Gothic architec- 
 ture. It is this motive that we English people, if w^e 
 would rightly understand the history of our own 
 country, have such deep need to appreciate. 
 
 At present it is not appreciated at all. Professor 
 Simpson, in his recently written work on architec- 
 ture, remarks that the word Gothic " conveys nothing 
 as to the origin of the style and is meaningless." 
 Professor Simpson is a great authority on this 
 subject, and has as much to do as any one, prob- 
 ably, with dictating the ideas and theories which 
 are accepted at the present time. Moreover, he does 
 not in this case argue or suggest, but pronounces a 
 final verdict. He has so many authorities with him 
 that he can afford to be summary. 
 
 As against this I ask the reader to look at the 
 
 203 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 facts for himself. What was the Gothic contribu- 
 tion to life ? We use the word Gothic, of course, as 
 the obvious and convenient appellation for the whole 
 succession of germanic barbarians which Rome's 
 declining strength admitted into the West. What 
 was the contribution to life of those races ? To 
 answer that question we must look first at society 
 as it was under the Roman Empire and next 
 at society as it emerged from the Dark Ages 
 and after the Gothic influence had acted upon 
 it. The difference between the two is the Gothic 
 contribution. 
 
 Let the reader compare them. On the one 
 hand he sees a community swayed and controlled 
 by a huge official system ; a community in which 
 the last traces of popular liberty have evaporated 
 and upon which a spirit of absolute lethargy and 
 inertia has settled. On the other hand he sees a 
 community instinct and glowing with local and 
 individual initiative ; a community in which the 
 popular sentiment, consolidated in guilds and 
 boroughs, asserts against all forms of official or 
 class tyranny its free right to self-government. 
 This human vitality translated into political action 
 is one with the instinct for liberty, for my right 
 of free action, of doing and being and saying the 
 thing I will, is identical with my resolve to resist 
 any form of tyrannous control and to assert my 
 right to be self-governing. This is the deepest 
 instinct of our race, and that in it which is 
 characteristic. It is this which animates English 
 history and gives it a definite purpose and aim, and 
 no one, failing to grasp this fact, can be said to be in 
 204 
 
The exuberance of the Gothic energy is seefi in nothing more 
 strikingly than in the bursting of the vaulting shafts into the 
 ribs of the groining 
 
 VAULT OF EXETER CATHEDRAL 
 
 p. 204 
 
THE GOTHIC CONTRIBUTION 
 touch with that instinct and with that aim. This I 
 call the Gothic contribution to life, and will any 
 one who watches with his mind's eye the hardy 
 vitality of mediaeval citizenship and contrasts it with 
 the poHtical lethargy of the Roman colony deny 
 the justice of the definition ? 
 
 But equally, will any one recall the styles of 
 architecture in which these two social states have 
 expressed themselves and question that in these 
 styles we have the very attributes of each society 
 embodied in stone ? What expression of the 
 ponderous routine of the Roman system could be 
 more appropriate than the mechanically reiterated 
 features of Roman architecture ? What expression 
 of the mediaeval vigour and virility could be more 
 lifelike than the almost fiercely energetic features of 
 Gothic ? Do not the minster and the cathedral 
 palpitate with the very same vitality which is 
 animating the boroughs in which they arise ? If 
 the reader still doubts let him trace the connection 
 in detail. He will find that not only does the 
 mediaeval style embody all that the Goths possessed 
 and all that the Romans lacked, not only does it 
 arise in Europe punctually at the moment when 
 the Gothic ideal obtained control of life, not only is 
 it participated in by whole populations with an 
 eagerness which marks it as the response to a 
 racial instinct : but also he will find that it keeps 
 touch always with the barbaric element in the 
 population, that it is strong where that element is 
 strong, weak where that element is weak, and non- 
 existent where that element is non-existent. Where 
 the seed is sown the crop springs, and wherever the 
 
 205 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 Gothic race has settled there and there only does 
 the Gothic style arise. 
 
 And yet in face of facts like these the professors 
 of architecture assure us that the word Gothic 
 conveys nothing as to the origin of the style and 
 is meaningless. I leave the matter to the reader's 
 consideration. In the next chapter I shall have to 
 speak of certain aspects of mediaeval life and art 
 not hitherto touched on. But these will not be of 
 a kind to weaken the conclusion arrived at so far. 
 The difference between the Roman colony and the 
 mediaeval borough is the Gothic contribution to life, 
 and Gothic architecture is the embodiment of that 
 contribution in stone. 
 
 Note.— It is desirable to mark clearly the difference in 
 principle between the Greek treatment of the arch as illus- 
 trated in S. Sophia and the Gothic treatment of it. To the 
 Greeks it was a feature in arcuated construction, of which 
 kind of construction the dome is the inevitable crown and 
 summary. To the Gothic races the arch was a delight in 
 itself because of its inherent activity and energy. It was this 
 characteristic rather than the idea of arcuated construction 
 as a whole which they set themselves to develop. Their 
 treatment has nothing of the Greek intellectual thoroughness, 
 but within its own limits is carried out with extraordinary 
 vigour. 
 
 206 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 THE RISE OF THE RENAISSANCE 
 
 The vertical and horizontal styles of architecture : What 
 they stand for : Energy ideaUsed in the twelfth century : 
 Chivalry, ballad poetry, crusades, Gothic architecture : Break- 
 up of the system before advance of intellect : The classic note 
 in architecture : Its breadth : Correspondence of the quality 
 with classic intellectualism : Spaciousness of classic thought 
 and classic buildings : Survival of this trait among Latin 
 races : Italy's reception of the Gothic style : Consistency of 
 her criticism : She insists on horizontal expansion : Rejects 
 Gothic as inadequate to intellectual ideas : Revives classic 
 proportions as more appropriate : The case of France : In- 
 tellectual awakening there, too, followed by adoption of 
 spacious forms : The Renaissance in England : Its insular 
 character : The expansion or contraction of architecture 
 expresses the play of the mind of Europe 
 
 PRACTICALLY all the architecture of the West is 
 traceable to two main sources — to the mediaeval 
 source or the classic. Under classic we include not 
 Greek and Roman only, but those round-arched 
 styles which, under the general title of Roman- 
 esque perpetuated Roman tradition in Europe. By 
 mediaeval we mean simply Gothic in its various 
 manifestations. The main mass and body of Euro- 
 pean architecture is made up of these two. There 
 are found here and there touches of Byzantine, the 
 architecture of colour; there are here and there 
 found touches of Saracenic, itself belonging to the 
 same family as Gothic, There may even occur an 
 
 207 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 occasional trace of Egyptian, Persian, or Chinese ; 
 but all these are the merest experiments, and in no 
 way form an integral part of our architecture. They 
 might all be deducted and never missed. Of the 
 churches and buildings we see round us in our 
 daily walks, all of them, practically speaking, and 
 every feature and detail belonging to each one of 
 them, launch us into one or other of the two main 
 currents which have their springs in the mediaeval 
 or classic age. Moreover, intermixed as they often 
 are, these streams never really blend. The forms of 
 which the rival styles are composed may be forced 
 into unnatural association, but they never combine 
 in effect ; they are based on opposite, apparently 
 irreconcilable, principles. Mediaeval architecture is 
 based on the idea of vertical expansion, classic archi- 
 tecture on the idea of lateral expansion. The desire 
 of the one is to rush up ; of the other to spread. 
 The salient trait in the architectural history of the 
 last seven centuries has been the feud that has raged 
 between these two principles. 
 
 What is interesting to observe, aiso, is that this 
 feud seems to be something more than a quarrel 
 over technical forms. On both sides there appear 
 again and again the same favourable or unfavourable 
 circumstances. Conditions which we learn to dis- 
 tinguish as favourable to the vertical principle 
 precede or announce its arrival, and in the same 
 way conditions favourable to the lateral principle 
 prepare its way for it in the world. These condi- 
 tions consist in the character of epochs or of races. 
 There are epochs in which the spirit of the age 
 fosters one or other of these principles. There are 
 208 
 
THE RISE OF THE RENAISSANCE 
 ra;ces which, through all ages, have a natural affinity 
 for one or the other of them. This being so, caiL 
 we, by following these indications, by observing the 
 conditions favourable to these principles, which 
 recur with their recurrence, and on which they feed 
 and prosper, affix something of a human character 
 to the architectural principles themselves ? Can we 
 say they stand for such and such a tendency in 
 human nature, and prove our conclusion from 
 historical evidence ? 
 
 It is recorded of Keats by his friend Edward 
 Holmes that in his childhood he greatly preferred 
 fighting to reading. "He would fight any one, 
 morning, noon and night, his brother among the 
 rest. It was meat and drink to him." A year or 
 two later, when he was fourteen or fifteen, we find 
 him so "suddenly and completely absorbed in 
 reading " that, according to Charles Cowden Clarke, 
 " he never willingly had a book out of his hand." 
 Perhaps in Keats's case the change came with un- 
 usual abruptness, but still it is more or less a normal 
 one. With most people the early days, when action 
 and love of adventure are all in all, are marked off 
 with some distinctness from the later days of experi- 
 ence and thought. Energy a boy possesses, and 
 imagination ; but not intellect. Boyhood feels but 
 it does not reason. Consequently all its spiritual 
 intuitions and ideals, instead of feeding thought, are 
 translated direct into terms of action. Romance, 
 love, friendship, ambition, weave themselves in boy- 
 hood into dreams of splendid deeds. The dreamer 
 is always a doer : he sails the sea a smuggler or 
 pirate; he explores tropic archipelagoes or virgin 
 
 O 209 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 backwoods with Mayne Reid and Fenimore Cooper. 
 His heroes in fiction are Lancelot, Boisguilbert, 
 and Amyas Leigh. In real life they are the captains 
 of his cricket and football elevens, and an uncle 
 who was wounded in the Boer war. It is a com- 
 plete philosophy, but fugitive— complete because 
 based on an intelligible view of life, fugitive because 
 it ignores a main principle in human nature. Later 
 that principle comes into play. Experience and 
 observation nourish the power of thinking. To 
 body and soul is added mind; life grows wider, 
 deeper, fuller ; action can no longer express it, and 
 that it should ever have seemed capable of express- 
 ing it is recognised as the arch-delusion of boy- 
 hood. 
 
 In something the same way there are epochs in 
 the progress of races that seem to correspond in 
 their ideals and limitations to this stage of boyhood 
 — epochs when the main theme of life is action, 
 and when those accompHshments and qualities are 
 most valued which lead to success in action. Such 
 ages have their own conception of what is noble and 
 becoming in conduct and manners, and their own 
 interpretation of art, and poetry, and religion. But 
 all these represent, when analysed, aspects of the 
 view of life common to the age, the view, namely, 
 that all ideas, however beautiful, or holy, or romantic, 
 can be expressed in terms of action ; that the brave 
 heart, the strong arm, the tough lance, are the fittest 
 instruments of religion, and love, and honour, and 
 supply the only deeds fit to be sung and celebrated. 
 In their concurrence these manifestations combine 
 to depict a life complete and self-consistent because 
 2IQ 
 
THE RISE OF THE RENAISSANCE 
 based on a distinct principle— a life in which all the 
 traits are in agreement and seem animated with a 
 similar character. But the duration of such an 
 epoch is limited. Steadily and surely it is under- 
 mined by the influence of thought, which intro- 
 duces into life ideals which action can no longer 
 satisfy or even express. When this occurs the whole 
 fabric of achievement in which the earlier phase of 
 life had embodied itself cracks and splits asunder, 
 and men march through a crumbling debris of old 
 customs and beliefs to a more complicated, perhaps, 
 but more ample existence. 
 
 The nature of the limitations of mediaevalism is 
 apparent directly we fix our attention on the age 
 itself. If we draw back from the life of this period 
 and survey it as a whole, we perceive that it is in a 
 sense complete. In reaching the stage of crusades 
 and chivalry, of romance, poetry and Gothic archi- 
 tecture, the principle underlying mediaeval life had 
 reached its maturity,' This was its time of fruition. 
 A stage of human progress is here rounded off and 
 completed. The coming stage will not perpetuate 
 the old endeavours and ideas. Crusades, chivalry, 
 romance poetry, the Gothic style, will none of them 
 be permanently established. All will pass away, for 
 they represent a principle which is played out. 
 The determination of the mediaeval age to translate 
 the loftiest ideals into terms of action must seem 
 to an age that has learnt to think an illusion. It is 
 not that we have lost the old ideals, it is that the 
 mediaeval expression of them has become inade- 
 quate. Honour, courtesy, loyalty, courage, all the 
 makings of chivalry, still subsist among us; but 
 
 211 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 chivalry in its mediaeval shape is extinct, and it is 
 so because the splinterings of lances and over- 
 throwing of adversaries no longer seem a satisfying 
 expression of those ideals. In the same way a St, 
 Louis of to-day would find no outlet for his piety in 
 slaying Saracens. He would conduct his crusade 
 by his own fireside and the paynim he would endea- 
 vour to overthrow would be his own gross or selfish 
 instincts. Chivalry and the crusades are, in a word, 
 the characteristics of an age of action, not an age of 
 thought. They are? lacking in the inwardness and 
 depth which] thought brings, and are sure to die 
 out as soon as thought shall have revealed their 
 inadequate interpretation of the ideas they have 
 undertaken to express. So also it is with romance 
 poetry. That poetry, like the life it portrays, has 
 great energy and vigour ; but, like the life it 
 portrays, it lacks depth. The descriptions are 
 literal only ; it deals with the appearances and out- 
 sides of things ; it does not enter into their real 
 nature ; it is deficient in thought. To pass from 
 the poetry of Luc de Gast or Walter Map to the 
 poetry of Milton or Wordsworth is to pass from a 
 poetry that does not think to a poetry that does. 
 Romance poetry, from its directness and vigour and 
 historical interest, may still command a fitful atten- 
 tion ; but as poetry, as nourishment for mind and 
 character, it has lost its value. It has died of the 
 malady inherent in the very life of an age that 
 undertakes to translate ideals into terms of action, 
 its fatal inability to think. If, however, this is so, it 
 is evident that Gothic must share in the general 
 deficiency. Itself the typical child of the mediaeval 
 212 
 
THE RISE OF THE RENAISSANCE 
 
 age, it is clear that if the mediaeval age was as poor 
 in thought as it was rich in energy— and I do not 
 know how any one who studies the age can doubt 
 this, or what meaning, if they do doubt it, they can 
 possibly attach to the Renaissance — then the same 
 shortcoming must infect Gothic architecture. Only 
 what can be got out of life can be put into art. 
 The energy which characterises mediaeval life we 
 find in the architecture. If lack of thought equally 
 characterises that life we shall find that in the 
 architecture too. 
 
 It is the consideration of how this deficiency of 
 the age affects Gothic architecture which will bring 
 us in touch with our second great architectural 
 principle, the principle of lateral expansion. We 
 referred just now to the way in which the upward- 
 rushing lines of Gothic embody the spirit of mediae- 
 val energy. But a certain structural limitation 
 necessarily attends that impulse. The reader will 
 see that the more steeply lines rush up the more 
 energy they express, while the more they droop and 
 incline to the horizontal, the more the energy dies 
 out of them and the more passive they become. 
 Equally obvious is it that the steeper the lines the 
 less space they span, while the more they droop the 
 more space they span. Accordingly it follows that 
 comparative narrowness of proportions is an integral 
 and essential quality in Verticle architecture. This, 
 structurally speaking, is the limitation on which 
 the positive achievement of Gothic is founded. 
 Expansion vertically is granted to it because expan- 
 sion laterally is denied. When we stand within a 
 Gothic nave it is the expressed intention of the 
 
 213 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 building, the upward rush, that draws our eyes. 
 But this effect is not obtained without loss. Mr. 
 Berenson speaks in one of his essays of the " noble 
 spaciousness " of the classic interiors, and he also 
 notes the seeming inability of northeners to appre- 
 ciate this beauty. No one certainly will accuse the 
 interior of Westminster Abbey of noble spaciousness. 
 The nave recalls some narrow chasm among gaunt 
 sea cliffs. The aisles are still narrower corridors. 
 The walls and piers so press upon one as to give 
 the feeling of being gripped in a stone vice. Noble 
 spaciousness, whatever it may be worth, is here 
 quite lacking. It is the price we have paid for all 
 this energy. 
 
 What then is this noble spaciousness worth ? In 
 other words, what does lateral expansion stand for ? 
 It is not a very difficult question to answer because 
 though the spacious style has been used to serve a 
 number of base and worldly ends, there is still 
 about those times in history when it has come 
 nearest perfection a general similarity in character 
 and ideas which cannot be mistaken. The central 
 type of the lateral style is, of course, the Doric 
 temple. Perfected and refined during several cen- 
 turies, the Doric temple is admitted to have attained 
 its utmost expressiveness in the last half of the fifth 
 century B.C., and in Athens. This half-century was 
 marked by the rebuilding of the Parthenon and by 
 the presence in Athens of such names as Socrates 
 and Plato, Thucydides and Herodotus, Phidias 
 and Miron, ^Eschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and 
 Aristophanes, which have made the age of Pericles 
 unrivalled in the world's history for the variety and 
 2x4 
 
THE RISE OF THE RENAISSANCE 
 perfection of its culture. Whatever else it is, then, 
 the Doric Temple, the supreme example of hori- 
 zontal architecture, is essentially the product of an 
 age of thought. It is the product of an age just as 
 fully charged with thought as the mediaeval age is 
 charged with energy. 
 
 And also, this Greek culture is remarkable not 
 only for its variety and perfection but for the dis- 
 tinct ideal it laid before itself. No one has written 
 more sympathetically of late years about the Greeks 
 than Professor Butcher; and Professor Butcher 
 points out in many places clearly enough what this 
 ideal of Greek culture was. It was the equal and 
 harmonious development of the human mind. The 
 expert and specialist had no part in the Greek 
 system. "With all their restless curiosity, their 
 insatiable love of knowledge, they had no respect for 
 mere erudition." " Wealth of thought, not wealth 
 of learning, was the thing they coveted." " Exten- 
 sive reading, the acquisition of facts, the storing of 
 them in the memory," all this, unless it is accom- 
 panied by " enlargement of mind," unless it " fits 
 men for the exercise of thought," unless it leads on 
 to "mental completeness and grasp," is material 
 wasted. It was the study of the Greek to see all 
 things in their relation to other things and in their 
 relation to Hfe ; and to do this, that even and com- 
 plete development of all his faculties was necessary 
 which was the aim of his whole training and educa- 
 tion. 
 
 Moreover, this system of culture was not the 
 Greek system only, or did not remain Greek only. 
 Handed down by Athens to Rome, it became the 
 
 215 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 note of classic culture generally. When, to this day, 
 we use the words classic and classical, it is this 
 system we have in our mind. We do not imply 
 necessarily a special and particular knowledge, but 
 the capacity for seeing a thing in its relation to 
 other things and to life. We imply that " enlarge- 
 ment of mind," that " mental completeness " which 
 is capable of a wide survey, and, also, we imply the 
 manner that corresponds, the moderation, calmness, 
 and lucidity which are the characteristics of the 
 classic style. 
 
 And, since men work in stone much as they work 
 in other things, we shall not be surprised to find 
 that this classic way of thinking imaged itself in an 
 architecture like to itself. Mr. Berenson's phrase 
 ** noble spaciousness " might indeed be transferred 
 with perfect propriety from the classic architecture 
 which occasioned it to the classic mind which 
 occasioned the architecture. Of course, it is true 
 that classic architecture, as developed under Rome, 
 not only, as has been previously pointed out, fell 
 into a dull groove of iteration, but was disfigured 
 by all sorts of vulgarities and a vast amount of 
 ostentation and pride, and was artistically perhaps 
 of very small account indeed. I am not attempting 
 an estimate of that architecture. I am merely in- 
 dicating the one thing of value which, in spite of its 
 many bad qualities, it really did possess. Its one 
 fine quality consisted in its spacious and ample pro- 
 portions, proportions in which are measured for us 
 the qualities of the classic mind, and which produce 
 upon us something of the same calming effect which 
 contact with the classic mind itself produces. 
 ^i6 
 
THE RISE OF THE RENAISSANCE 
 I need not here dwell upon the preliminary phases 
 which developed the Augustan age. The Mediter- 
 ranean Empire of Caesar was the larger stage pre- 
 pared for it ; the spread of Greek influence and 
 ideas was its inspiration. As in politics the con- 
 servative, or distinctively Italian, element resisted 
 the cosmopolitanism of the new Empire, so m 
 Hterature and thought the local standard and local 
 scheme of culture resisted the Hellenic [widening 
 influence. The triumph of general ideas, though 
 under conditions of political servitude which first 
 enfeeble and then corrupt them, is declared in the 
 years leading up to and culminating in the age of 
 Augustus. It is declared in two ways, ways which, 
 we shall perhaps see by-and-by, are inseparable. 
 In the first place it is declared in an outburst of 
 intellectual activity remarkable not so much for 
 individual genius, though individual genius (Virgil, 
 Livy, Ovid, Horace) is rife enough, as for a general 
 and universal interest in thought and study, an 
 interest which shows itself in such signs as the 
 founding of libraries, not public only, but private, 
 not in Rome only but in country towns and villas, 
 in the forming of literary clubs and societies, and in 
 the honour and consideration in which the art of 
 literature was held by all from Augustus himself 
 downward. In the second place, it is shown in the 
 outburst of building activity by which Rome in this 
 age was transfigured, and which itself is distinguished 
 architecturally by magnificence in part, but, more 
 fundamentally, by a sense of order and stateliness 
 and a love of broad and ample proportions. 
 
 Henceforth we find this sense of breadth and 
 
 ' 217 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 
 amplitude established as the essential principle of 
 architecture. It becomes architecture's constant 
 and unfailing attribute, the quality in classic archi- 
 tecture which goes with that quality we call classic 
 in thought and literature. We find it transferred 
 to the early Christian basilicas, and, shrunken and 
 diminished, feebly surviving as a structural motive 
 in various forms of Romanesque down even to the 
 twelfth century. Then Gothic, the style of energy, 
 killed it, and there followed an epoch when the old 
 classic breadth was absent from the architecture, as 
 it was absent from the mind, of the age. But 
 though apparently dead it was destined to a re- 
 naissance, and it is to that Renaissance, attesting as 
 it does the significance of the horizontal principle 
 in architecture, that we will now turn. 
 
 Mr. Symonds has given an account of the Re- 
 naissance and of the causes which led up to it which 
 I cannot but think in some respects misleading. It 
 is his conviction that the Renaissance is an act of 
 emancipation. To this w^ord he returns again and 
 again. "The emancipation of the reason for the 
 modern world," the " emancipation of the reason 
 of mankind," "the work of intellectual emancipa- 
 tion for the rest of Europe," and so on. The 
 power that had hitherto held mankind in a state of 
 " mental bondage " was, according to Mr. Symonds, 
 the Church. He draws a terrible picture of the 
 Church sitting like an incubus on the intellect of 
 the Middle Ages. " The mental condition of the 
 Middle Ages was one of ignorant prostration before 
 the idols of the Church " ; and the Church itself 
 had attained to such an ascendancy that the age 
 ?l8 
 
THE RISE OF THE RENAISSANCE 
 
 might be said "to look at life through a cowl." 
 This theory of the mediaeval mind, prostrated and 
 priest-ridden, and ot the Renaissance as the fairy 
 prince setting it free, is the keynote of Mr. Symonds's 
 analysis ; but I do not in the least see how either 
 proposition will stand examination. A disinterested 
 student of the Middle Ages will find plenty of 
 ignorance, no doubt ; but he will find very little 
 prostration. He will find that the age looked at 
 Hfe more often through a steel visor than through 
 a cowl. He will find that the barons of the twelfth 
 century needed no instruction in the art of managing 
 their priests, and that the exhortations of the Church 
 were only so far attended to as they happened to 
 chime with the humour of the age. Mr. Symonds 
 seems to have mistaken a state of mental insensi- 
 bility for a state of mental bondage. The northern 
 races in the Middle Ages had all the intellectual 
 emancipation they needed or could have had. If 
 thought was lacking, it was not because it .was 
 strangled but because the thinking age had not yet 
 been reached. When it arrived, the age moved 
 forward, carrying, as it always does with perfect 
 comfort, its Church and priests along with it. The 
 Renaissance, as I understand it, was not an act of 
 emancipation but of natural development; the 
 succession in its due time and season of the age of 
 thought to the age of action. 
 
 In tracing the rise of Renaissance art in Europe 
 the facts we have to bear in mind are these : We have 
 already identified the Gothic style of architecture 
 with the northern racial temperament. It was the 
 inherent energy and individual initiative of the 
 
 219 
 
_ THE WORKS OF MAN 
 
 northern races which infused both a new vitality 
 into the old Latin society and a new vitality into 
 the old Latin architecture. We have therefore in 
 Gothic a style commensurate with the northern 
 influence, and which we shall naturally expect to 
 find, and find only, where that influence is dominant 
 in life. On the other hand in classic architecture we 
 have made acquaintance v/ith a principle of a quite 
 different kind, the principle of horizontal develop- 
 ment, which we recognise as expressing the ruling 
 classic characteristic, namely, free play of intellect. 
 
 Now what, if these definitions are sound, must 
 be the tendency of Renaissance art ? For one 
 thing, the Renaissance was essentially an intellectual 
 movement ; for another, a Latin not a Gothic race 
 took the lead in it. Our thoughts turn to Italy. 
 Italy was never Gothicised. She received a leaven, 
 or top-dressing, as it were, of the northern racial 
 element, but she remained in the bulk of her popu- 
 lation essentially Latin. Therefore if our reading 
 of Gothic art be right, Italy will resist the importa- 
 tion of Gothic forms of architecture. On the other 
 hand, Italy was the birthplace of the modern 
 intellectual movement. Therefore, if our reading of 
 the horizontal expansion as applied to building be 
 just, Italy will instinctively turn to the horizontal 
 principle as a means of self-expression. 
 
 Now let us see how this works out. What is 
 apparent at a glance is that all those modes of 
 utterance to which the north had recourse, chivalry 
 and romance poetry, crusades and Gothic architec- 
 ture, fell in Italy quite flat, or at least only fizzled 
 fitfully here and there in the northern parts of the 
 220 
 
THE RISE OF THE RENAISSANCE 
 country where the admixture of Gothic blood was 
 strongest. We will not follow these manifestations 
 here except so far as they concern architecture, but 
 the reception given in Italy to Gothic architecture 
 is particularly worth noticing, partly for the light it 
 throws on the meaning of horizontal and vertical 
 proportion, and partly because it really belongs and 
 leads up to the Renaissance movement itself. 
 
 In the first place, then, we find that, immeasurably 
 ahead of the northern nations as Italy was in general 
 matters of art, she had to be instructed in a style 
 peculiarly their own. The towns of the north were 
 the first to receive the style, and the earliest ex- 
 amples were built by German or English architects. 
 Fergusson selects the church of St. Andrea at Vercelli 
 as " perhaps the first Italian edifice into which the 
 pointed arch was introduced." It was begun as 
 early as 1219 by the Cardinal Guala Bicchieri, who 
 had been Legate in England, and who brought with 
 him an English architect to introduce the new style. 
 However, in spite of this, "with the plan all 
 influence of the English architect seems to have 
 ceased and the structure is in purely Italian style." 
 As to the general character of this style, "Italy, 
 though a fashion rather than a taste had introduced 
 a partial approximation to the forms of northern 
 architecture, never really loved or even understood 
 it." Fergusson dwells on this idea of its being a 
 style misunderstood. It " is a style copied without 
 understanding." It " displays ignorance of the true 
 Gothic feeling." It was " a feeble imitation, copying 
 a few Gothic forms without realising their spirit." 
 This is the usual northern estimate of Italian Gothic. 
 
 221 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 But these Italian buildings show more method in 
 their treatment of the style than commonly belongs 
 to mere ignorance. What they seem to exhibit is 
 not ignorance so much as dislike of the Gothic 
 feeling. They contain a criticism which, whether 
 justifiable or not, is at any rate consistent and 
 intelligible and worth a moment's consideration. 
 
 The Cathedral of Florence, called by Fergusson 
 "by far the greatest and most perfect example of 
 Italian Gothic," may be taken as representative of 
 the style. The measures taken here for counter- 
 acting the northern influence are adopted more or 
 less without exception in every Gothic building in 
 Italy,' These measures are of two kinds. In the 
 first place the vertical tendency, the upward rush, in 
 which the energy of Gothic primarily resides, is 
 peremptorily checked. In fully developed Gothic 
 the craving of all the lines to soar receives its 
 expression in the use made of the clustered shafts. 
 These shafts are really, as I have pointed out, 
 bundles of stalks projected through their capitals in 
 every direction ; so that, looking up the length of a 
 Gothic nave, one is impressed by the great array of 
 lines springing in clusters from the pavement and 
 guiding the eye without let or check to the apex of 
 the roof. This is the feature which pre-eminently 
 exhibits the energetic character of this style, which 
 excites most powerfully the ecstasy of its admirers, 
 and which is most stubbornly resisted by Italian 
 architects. In the Florentine cathedral the aisle 
 piers are formed of massive, engaged pilasters, four 
 square. Their flat faces have none of the fiery 
 energy of the Gothic cluster and they are surmounted 
 222 
 
THE RISE OF THE RENAISSANCE 
 
 by heavy and elaborate capitals. Above these, 
 however, an indication of the Gothic idea is given 
 by the appearance of vaulting pilasters. These 
 commence the ascent of the nave wall, but before 
 they have got far they are stopped by the imposition 
 of other big capitals of no use structurally and merely 
 serving as blows dealt at the vertical principle. Once 
 more the pilasters emerge and crawl painfully a few 
 feet higher, when their career is finally quenched by 
 a projecting gallery, formed of heavy corbels 
 supporting a massive stone balcony which runs 
 entirely round the building, remorselessly splitting 
 it in half. 
 
 And now, the vertical principle being thus 
 effectually disposed 'of, the Italian architect turns 
 his attention to those ideas of his own which he 
 wishes to substitute'f or it. That powerful horizontal 
 line of the balcony which we have seen dealing the 
 vertical tendency its coup de grace, is the line he 
 loves, and gives the clue to all his efforts which are 
 now directed to developing the idea of lateral 
 expansion to the utmost. Inside the Florentine 
 cathedral is opposed to every northern example by 
 its enormous width. Though not so long as 
 Westminster Abbey, it wants but a few feet of being 
 twice as wide, and this width is accentuated and 
 apparently greatly increased by the enormous span 
 of the aisle arcades. The reader is aware that 
 narrow arches and close-set shafts add to the 
 appearance of height and detract from the appear- 
 ance of width, whereas shafts far apart and spreading 
 arches detract from height and add to width ; the 
 inclination of the eye being to travel always in the 
 
 223 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 direction of the lines given it to run on: The 
 Florentine aisles consist of only four arches, and 
 these span about the same distance that fourteen 
 Westminster arches would reach. By these means 
 the naturally great width of the interior is accen- 
 tuated, to such a degree indeed that all Gothic 
 feeling is totally eliminated from it and in its 
 general character it much more recalls an early 
 basilica than the style of the North. 
 
 Outside we should find the same idea insisted on. 
 We should find the powerful, vertical lines of the 
 northern buttresses toned down or obliterated, and 
 in place of them the long level outline of the nave, 
 underlined by heavy horizontal cornices, giving the 
 idea of lateral expansion. Many other features of 
 the same kind might be instanced. I will content 
 myself with mentioning the dome, which, in Italian 
 Gothic, takes the place of the northern spire. Ex- 
 ternally no feature embodies the northern feeling 
 so powerfully as the spire. It seems to have been 
 designed as a corrective to the necessarily more or 
 less horizontal aspect of the building as seen from 
 without. It was sure, therefore, to be peculiarly 
 obnoxious to Italian taste, and in place of it we have 
 the wide and ample dome victoriously asserting the 
 old idea of lateral expansion. These modifications 
 are, it must be remembered, typical. All Italian 
 Gothic is more or less altered from the northern 
 original, and it is the invariable purpose of all 
 these alterations to substitute lateral expansion for 
 vertical. The Italian treatment of the style is, in 
 short, perfectly consistent, and is not to be regarded 
 as meaningless or merely a bad imitation. It con- 
 224 
 
THE RISE OF THE RENAISSANCE 
 tains a quite definite criticism which, whether just 
 or unjust, has purpose and significance. 
 
 Further, it will be seen from this that the Italian 
 Gothic style may almost be said to form part of the 
 Italian Renaissance itself. At least it is the appro- 
 priate introduction to it. Any one who had observed 
 the Italian modification of Gothic would easily con- 
 jecture what the general character of Italy's native 
 style would be when her time came to produce it. 
 He would see that she was persistently hankering 
 after breadth in architecture, and that no exhorta- 
 tions, however earnest, had power to detach her 
 from it. He would accordingly be able to assert 
 with confidence that the Italian style proper, when 
 it came, would be as purely a horizontal style as 
 Gothic was vertical. It is the more important to 
 notice this foreshadowing of the character of 
 Renaissance because we are apt sometimes to 
 imagine that, at least in architecture, it adopted the 
 forms it did merely because they were classic forms, 
 a part of the furniture of that Roman life which the 
 Italian imagination found so captivating. But it is 
 certain that Italy could no more have taken from 
 Rome a style that did not suit her than she could 
 take from the North a style that did not suit her. 
 If she borrowed the Roman style of architecture, it 
 was because that style said pretty nearly exactly 
 what she herself had it in her mind to say; and that 
 this is so is shown by those systematic experiments 
 in the horizontal which we have been watching in 
 Italian Gothic. One is tempted sometimes to wish 
 that the earth had lain a little deeper on the Roman 
 ruins, and that Italy had been left to evolve her new 
 
 r 225 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 architecture for herself. An original style produced 
 by the Renaissance, Michelangelo working archi- 
 tecturally in the ideas of the period, would have 
 been vastly more interesting to posterity than the 
 reproduction of stereotyped classic formulas. At 
 the same time there can be no doubt that in general 
 character this Italian style would have resembled 
 the older classic. It would at least have resembled 
 it to the extent that it would have been strictly a 
 style of horizontal development. 
 
 And this it would have been because the mental 
 conditions underlying it were similar to the mental 
 conditions underlying the old classic styles. The 
 ideal of all-round culture which formed the scheme 
 and ground-plan of classic thought, is precisely the 
 ideal which we find reasserting itself as the scheme 
 of Renaissance thought. Here lies no doubt the 
 secret of the Renaissance as an inspiration. We are 
 sometimes inclined to wonder, as we trace back our 
 various systems of thought, our philosophy and 
 theology, our sciences and arts, our discoveries and 
 inventions, and all the fruits of modern reason, to 
 their common starting-point in the Renaissance, 
 that results which have since loomed so large 
 should have had, save in the one matter of art, such 
 small beginnings. All knowledge seems to flow 
 from the Renaissance, yet in the Renaissance itself 
 there is but little knowledge. But as we study the 
 play of mind of that age the wonder passes. The 
 truth appears that Italy's mission in the Renaissance 
 was not to achieve but to stimulate. She plucked no 
 fruit of knowledge, but she taught men to climb the 
 tree. And this she did by infecting them with her 
 226 
 
THE RISE OF THE RENAISSANCE 
 
 own joy in thinking, her disinterested love of ideas, 
 her vivid, sensuous delight in the mere movement 
 and play of the mind. There are other schemes of 
 culture perhaps, but this is the scheme that brings 
 joy. The happiness which we recognise as belong- 
 ing to the Renaissance is the happiness which 
 springs, not from results achieved by study or 
 reflection, but from the sensation of the activity of 
 the mind itself. 
 
 This in the Renaissance is the classic note. Its 
 actual achievement, as compared to that of Athens 
 or Rome, was slight. Nevertheless, between the 
 ages of Pericles, Augustus and Lorenzo there is 
 a profound intellectual affinity, arising from the love 
 of disinterested thinking, common to all three. If 
 we realise this affinity we shall not fall into the 
 delusion of supposing that the Renaissance adopted 
 classic architecture, together with classic fashion? 
 and ideas of all kinds, merely for the reason that it 
 hailed from Rome. The broad arcades and ample 
 vast interiors of Renaissance palaces and churches 
 are the natural lodging of minds that dislike 
 barriers and obstacles of all kinds, and have an 
 aversion for everything cramped and narrow. 
 The spirit of the Renaissance age needed such 
 lodging, and such a one had been long in prepara- 
 tion. Out of the most refractory material the 
 attempt had been made and the determination 
 expressed to establish in Italy the architecture of 
 spaciousness. The style of Imperial Rome was 
 seized because it met this need. It is easy to 
 exaggerate the importance of the affectation and 
 erudition of the style* its daubs of acanthus foliage, 
 
 227 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 its trophies and orders and such other bric-a-brac. 
 These are accidents : the expression merely of 
 Italy's effusive gratitude to a style that gave her 
 what she wanted. Let us think rather of the main 
 proportions, those "symphonies of space" as Mr 
 Berenson calls them, which produce on the senses 
 " the tonic and ennobling effect of classical music." 
 This is what stands for the real, interior relationship 
 between classic Rome and the Renaissance, the 
 relationship of mind and intellect. 
 
 And now if the reader, glancing back over the 
 course of our argument, and having followed the 
 fortunes of the horizontal principle from its great 
 days in the classic age through its struggle with the 
 vertical principle to its triumph in the Renaissance, 
 having noted, too, the mental conditions that 
 inevitably attend and announce it, is inclined to 
 recognise a connection between spaciousness in 
 architecture and a free play of the mind, let me ask 
 him to follow onward the course of history and 
 observe what further justification this connection 
 receives from events. The Italian Renaissance did 
 not long remain Italian. The love of thinking 
 which was revived by the old race was by-and-by 
 developed by the new. When this happened the 
 new race, having attained more or less to the same 
 intellectual standpoint, began to reach out towards 
 Italian architecture exactly as Italy, a century or 
 two earlier, had reached out towards classic archi- 
 tecture. There came about a counter-revolution in 
 the northern style. As the style of ideas had been 
 killed by the style of energy, so now the style of 
 energy went down in turn before the style of ideas, 
 228 
 
THE RISE OF THE RENAISSANCE 
 Everywhere, keeping pace with the flow of ideas* 
 went the proportions that could properly house 
 them ; but not everywhere do we find those propor- 
 tions spreading with the same quickness or the same 
 completeness. The old style struggled against the 
 new, and sometimes the struggle was long, obstinate 
 and doubtful ; sometimes shorter, and, in the result, 
 decisive. If now we keep one eye on the spread of 
 ideas and the other on the spread of horizontal 
 architecture, we shall find that in the architecture 
 we have a kind of register of the thinking aptitude 
 of Europe. We shall find that the accessibility or 
 inaccessibility of various parts of Europe at various 
 times to ideas is measured for us in the readiness of 
 architecture in those parts to expand, or in its refusal 
 to expand. 
 
 By nature a lover of ideas and prompt to entertain 
 them, France, more readily than other nations, 
 entered into the spirit of the new style. But even 
 in France there was a long transition period 
 extending perhaps, as Fergusson thinks, almost to 
 the succession of Louis XIV. in 1642, That period 
 is covered in tw^o steps. During its first half the 
 tendency was to maintain Gothic outlines and pro- 
 portions, but to fill in with classic ornament and 
 detail. Diwing the second half, when Gothic was 
 dying out, the tendency was to substitute classic 
 outlines and proportions with, as yet, little regard 
 to harmony, but to introduce a number of Gothic 
 details and minor features with very disconcerting 
 effect. This altercation between opposite principles, 
 this attempt to unite " the picturesqueness of Gothic 
 with the gigantic features with which Michelangelo 
 
 229 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 had overlaid his pseudo-classical constructions/' 
 may be taken as the lowest point in taste reached 
 by French architecture. During the reign of 
 Louis XIII., however, that architecture was finally 
 making up its mind to which principle it should 
 adhere, and " forming itself into the purer style of 
 the Grand Monarque." 
 
 As to this purer style I will not here stop to 
 consider the many charges that may be brought 
 against it. That it is worldly, cold-hearted, arro- 
 gant and purse-proud is indisputable, and equally 
 indisputable is it that these were signs of the times 
 and of society. But there is something else much 
 more worthy of notice and more characteristic of 
 the age both in the architecture and in society than 
 this worldliness and arrogance. In the palaces and 
 chateaux and great Parisian hotels of the period 
 there comes to light a quality hitherto never recog- 
 nised by the North. The age was one of great 
 activity in building, and of an activity directed to a 
 definite end, animated by an intelligible principle 
 and hence resulting in a style. And of this style 
 the main characteristic, under all its gilt trappings 
 and gewgaws, is once more the old width and 
 space. In these ample courts and stately salons 
 and spacious galleries, there revives again some- 
 thing of the atmosphere of classic days and classic 
 architecture. No mere wealth and love of show 
 ever achieved an effect like this. What it indicates, 
 we, by this time, know, and we can turn to the 
 life of the age with a confident assurance of 
 finding it. 
 
 By the middle of the seventeenth century Italy, as 
 230 
 
THE RISE OF THE RENAISSANCE 
 
 the preacher of the new gospel, the gospel of ideas, 
 had dropped out of the running , and France had 
 taken her place. Henceforth the task of inculcating 
 ideas and keeping alive in Europe the love of dis- 
 interested thought was to be the task of France ; 
 and there arose, as though in response to the call of 
 destiny, a host of great names to carry that task out, 
 Corneille, La Fontaine, Moli^re, Boileau, Racine, 
 La Bruyere, Descartes, Pascal, Bossuet, Fenelon — 
 as we review the list it seems as if all the genius of 
 French literature were crammed into one pregnant 
 half-century. But what is the key-note and mark of 
 intellectual affinity in this galaxy of talent ? It is, 
 or used to be, the fashion to judge Louis Quatorze 
 literature by one or two great dramatic poets, and to 
 pronounce it highly artificial and stereotyped. But 
 if we turn to the general mass of the literary 
 work of the period the result is extraordinarily 
 different. For this general mass of literary work 
 is notable above all for flexibility, liveliness and 
 naturalness ; for its remarkable clearness of intelli- 
 gence, and the ease and precision with which it 
 expresses its ideas. This liveliness of intelligence, 
 much more than pedantry and artifice, is the cha- 
 racteristic of the age. Madame de Sevigne is far 
 more typical than Racine. From her letters, to say 
 nothing of the endless memoirs and journals of a 
 reign singularly rich in this kind of literature, we 
 gain an idea of the culture of French society. 
 Introduced to numbers of clever men and women, 
 we can follow their interchange of judgments and 
 ideas, and catch the intellectual tone of the age. 
 And, allow^ing for the slight difference arising 
 
 231 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 from Italy's bent being more artistic and France's 
 more literary, the tone of French society in the 
 seventeenth century is singularly reminiscent of the 
 tone of Italian society two centuries before. There 
 is the same atmosphere of curiosity, alertness, and 
 eagerness to know and learn, only taking in France 
 a more distinctively literary turn than in Italy. 
 
 The great intellectual and literary work which 
 emanated from the seventeenth century in France 
 is itself a proof how widely spread the pleasure of 
 thinking disinterestedly and expressing accurately 
 was ; for it is itself collective in character. That 
 work was the fashioning of the incomparable French 
 prose ; a prose flexible, deft, precise, fit to become 
 the medium of exchange for European thought. 
 Fashioned and tempered in an age when the dis- 
 interested love of ideas was a paramount intellectual 
 instinct, this prose bears [witness in every inflection 
 to the influence of that instinct. Every one knows 
 how much easier it is for a Frenchman to say 
 exactly what he means than for an Englishman or a 
 German ; the reason being evidently that the French 
 medium of expression was forged in an age when 
 the mind of the nation was clear ; when it was not 
 distraught by prejudices, or pledged to local 
 standards. Constructed by pure ideas, it was fitted 
 in its nature to express ideas. It is in the minds of 
 its architects that we must look for the origin of the 
 lucidity of French prose ; and of its architects, if 
 Descartes, Pascal, Fenelon, La Rochefoucauld hold 
 foremost places, it is only as first out of a multitude. 
 That prose was in reality the work of all those who 
 in this age felt the delight of exercising their minds 
 232 
 
THE RISE OF THE RENAISSANCE 
 
 it is, in short, a work of the age itself, and it is what 
 vindicates the age's claim to the title of classic. 
 
 Thus, under the glitter and state and show of 
 Louis Quatorze society we search for and find, for 
 the first time among northern races, the intellectual 
 freedom which is the main characteristic of the 
 time; just as under the show and glitter of its 
 buildings we found that love of ample space which 
 was the main characteristic of its architecture. 
 These two, the play of mind in the age, the breadth 
 in the architecture, are the vital traits. They are also 
 inseparable. Step by step they keep pace as they 
 advance and every struggle of the mind out of the 
 strait-waistcoat of mediaeval prejudice is chronicled 
 in a modification of the narrowness of mediaeval 
 architecture. Arrived at this point, the meaning of 
 France's preceding long transition becomes clear. 
 In divesting herself slowly and painfully of the last 
 vestiges of her mediaeval style, France was but 
 undergoing the necessary preparation for the role 
 she was to adopt ; the role of a preacher of the 
 gospel of ideas. She was but doing what Italy, with 
 the same end in view, had found it equally necessary 
 to achieve three centuries earlier.* 
 
 • On page 104 of Mr. Blomfield's interesting " Studies in 
 Architecture," France's debt to Italian culture is duly recog- 
 nised. " Of the service that Italy rendered to France in the 
 matter of culture there can be no sort of doubt. France 
 learnt from Italy the lesson of humanism." On the following 
 page we find her architectural debt also recognised. " From 
 the first Francis used every effort to induce Italian artists to 
 settle in France. The Justes of Florence were already there, 
 and busy at Tours. Solario, the pupil of Leonardo da Vinci, 
 had been at work in 1508 ; and Francis persuaded the great 
 master himself to settle in France." After 1527 the Italian 
 influx increased and all the chief earlv Renaissance work was 
 
 233 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 Such IS the testimony of France. That of 
 England, though different in kind, is similar in 
 import. Our insensibiHty to ideas, so elaborately 
 analysed for us by our chief literary critic, has, since 
 his day, been expatiated on to that degree that we 
 may be pardoned for being a little sick of the 
 subject. There is no need to dilate upon it here. 
 There are, perhaps, signs which seem to show that 
 the reproach will not always be true of us; but 
 however that may be, no one will deny that it is true 
 of our past. Isolated and cut off from Europe, and 
 especially remote from Italy, it is no wonder that 
 the steps by which the English were induced to 
 adopt Renaissance ideas were slower and more un- 
 certain than was the case in other countries. This 
 being so, no wonder too that the spaciousness in 
 architecture which goes with ideas should have been 
 equally reluctantly admitted. The ideas and the 
 proportions indeed go so inevitably hand in hand 
 that words applicable to the one are applicable to 
 the other. " The steps by which the English were 
 induced to adopt the classical style were slower and 
 more uncertain than those which preceded its intro- 
 duction into other countries of Western Europe," 
 
 superintended by Italians. Thus we have culture and 
 architectural forms coming in together. Mr. Blomfield does 
 not note any essential connection between the two : never- 
 theless we have only to dwell on the meaning of that word 
 "culture," as understood in Athens aud Florence, with all its 
 suggestions of harmony and balance and many-sided, ample 
 development, to feel that between it and the spacious 
 Renaissance architecture the closest possible connection did, 
 in fact, exist. Indeed, it was only in proportion as France 
 managed to assimilate the culture that she was able to evolve 
 the architecti^re. 
 
 234 
 
THE RISE OF THE RENAISSANCE 
 
 are Fergusson's remarks on the reception of 
 Renaissance architecture in England. 
 
 Nor was this only the case. Not only was the 
 style received very reluctantly, but changes of great 
 significance were wrought in it before it was received 
 at all. What those changes were the reader will 
 easily guess. He will remember the fate of the 
 vertical style when that was introduced into Italy, 
 and how persistently the Italians set themselves to 
 stretch and amplify its narrow proportions before 
 they would have anything to do with it. Well, here 
 we have the reverse process. Just as the Italians 
 would have nothing to do with our narrow style 
 until they had widened it, so we would have nothing 
 to do with their wide style until we had narrowed it. 
 St. Paul's in this respect is to St. Peter's at Rome 
 exactly what the Florentine Cathedral is to West- 
 minster Abbey. The style of St. Paul's is, or tries 
 to be, the style of lateral expansion, but of a lateral 
 expansion so cramped and curtailed that the general 
 character of the interior is much more closely akin 
 to the mediaeval than to the classic temper. 
 
 Thus we find not only that the horizontal principle 
 revived in Europe with the love of ideas, but that it 
 afterwards kept pace with the circulation of ideas. 
 It developed its full amplitude where ideas were 
 freely welcomed ; it put forth a pinched aud meagre 
 growth where they were coldly and unwillingly 
 entertained. In short, it acts, as was just now said, 
 as a register by which the expansion and contraction 
 of the mind of Europe may be accurately gauged. 
 Only, in order that it may act thus, we must make 
 up our minds to deal with essentials, not accidents. 
 
 23s 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 We must not be put off by those plausible words 
 ** taste " and 'fashion/' nor think that the character 
 of all architecture resides in acanthus leaves and 
 pilasters. We must penetrate beneath taste and 
 fashion to the mind of the age on the one hand, 
 and we must look beyond ornament and detail to 
 the main proportions of the architecture on the 
 other. 
 
 A great deal more evidence might be cited on the 
 subject, but having attempted a general outline I 
 may leave it to the reader to add instances. He 
 will find no lack of them. I am not sure that his 
 best way of considering the subject would not be to 
 compare broadly the times and people belonging 
 to the two styles. For instance, if he were to select 
 such representatives of their age as Plato, Livy, 
 Leonardo da Vinci and Fenelon, he would be 
 conscious of no antagonism in their association. 
 All four would get on well together and have plenty 
 to say to each other. But introduce a representative 
 of mediaevalism, introduce a St. Louis or Coeur de 
 Lion, and what a jar and discord is created I And 
 why ? Why should F6nelon and St. Louis be 
 dumb to each other while Fenelon and Plato can 
 discuss the immortality of the soul with mutual 
 interest ? Because, of course, Fenelon and Plato, 
 like Livy and Leonardo, are intellectualists, while 
 St. Louis and Coeur de Lion are not. Merely to 
 imagine the juxtaposition of such individuals is 
 enough to make us conscious of the 'gulf which 
 separates an age of action from an age of thought. 
 If to this we add the architecture of the time, taking 
 it as embodying the mind of its ace : if we try to 
 236 
 
THE RISE OF THE RENAISSANCE 
 imagine St. Louis in a classic portico, or Plato in a 
 Gothic minster, we shall find ourselves struck by the 
 same sense of absurdity as when we compare the 
 men themselves. The men and their architecture 
 go together. To one party belongs the vertical 
 principle, to the other the horizontal. The men of 
 action, with their lances and plumes, congregate 
 in the building whose soaring lines embody their 
 own fiery energy. The men of ideas meet together 
 where the noble breadth of the architecture gives 
 room for the play of thought. 
 
 Or, if the reader would particularise, let him 
 choose the Gothic period itself in England for 
 examination. Let him trace from Henry IL to 
 Henry VI IL the slow stretching of the national 
 mind, the effects of the work of universities and 
 other civilising influences, the gradual evolution of 
 a type of statesman and thinker — Grosseteste, Roger 
 Bacon, Earl Simon, John Wickliffe, William of 
 Wykeham, Colet, Cranmer, More, Wolsey, Arch- 
 bishop Warham and many others — still insular it 
 may be, yet of an ampler cast than is found in the 
 earlier age. And having noted this, then let him 
 look up at the architecture and watch the gradual 
 drooping of the long lines and their approach more 
 and more to the horizontal in their effort to express 
 a lateral expansion little in accordance with their 
 original impulse. Here he will find again the tally 
 between proportion and thought, and the expansion 
 of the architecture will register for him a similar 
 expansion of mind. 
 
 One final instance I wish briefly to mention since 
 it possesses some of the interest of contemporary, or 
 
 237 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 almost contemporary, history. We all know that 
 what happened after the French Revolution was 
 that England was thrown violently back upon her- 
 self. Though we had dealt summarily at Waterloo 
 with the aspect of the movement most intelligible to 
 us, yet France's shot-and-steel propagation of ideas 
 had confirmed us in our original distrust of the 
 species. 
 
 An epoch of contraction followed. Insular pre- 
 judices and limitations reasserted themselves, and 
 England became entirely cut off from European life 
 and European ideas. This isolation took effect in 
 many ways. It showed itself in the dullness and 
 ponderous self-satisfaction of Early Victorian society 
 and Early Victorian art. But, above all, this isolation, 
 this severance from the life and thought of Europe, 
 showed itself in a passionate revival of Gothic 
 architecture. All the usual explanations of this 
 revival are forthcoming. It was due to the influence 
 of two or three individuals, to a revived interest of 
 the public in the art of building, to the many models 
 of the style existing in the country, to the cheapness 
 of the material used in its construction, and so forth. 
 Let us be put off by no such phrases. We reverted 
 to our old narrow style in the nineteenth century 
 for the same reason that Italy reverted to her old 
 wide style in the fifteenth, because it fitted our 
 mental outlook. We saw, in the fifteenth century, 
 the widening mind of Italy brought within reach 
 of the horizontal and seizing that.* We see in the 
 nineteenth century the contracting mind of England 
 brought within reach of the vertical style and seizing 
 that. Wou\l cot ^he reader, as he watched the treat- 
 238 
 
THE RISE OF THE RENAISSANCE 
 
 ment of the horizontal principle in England, its slow 
 and partial reception and the changes and contrac- 
 tions wrought in it, have said that here was a country 
 which needed but a strong set-back in ideas to be 
 thrown once more into the arms of the old narrow 
 style after which it was still evidently hankering ? 
 
 Thus, we have attempted some answer to the 
 question with which we set out as to the meaning 
 of the vertical and horizontal principles in architec- 
 ture. We find that the former stands for energy, 
 and is the outcome of an age which glorified energy 
 and made it a vehicle for the expression of all ideals. 
 We find that the latter stands for thought and the 
 free play of intellect, and that its great epochs are 
 distinguished and related to each other across the 
 ages by their love of ideas. Further, we find that 
 these two principles measure for us the play of mind 
 of Europe, and that free circulation of ideas or 
 reversion to local standards is indicated in the 
 corresponding expansion or contraction of the 
 architecture of that place and period. Whether this 
 interpretation will meet with the reader's acceptance 
 I do not know, but I will venture to affirm that, even 
 if it be accepted, Gothic architecture will not, on the 
 whole, be the loser. Lose in some respects, no 
 doubt, it inevitably will. We should no longer, if 
 we accept it, agree with Ruskin when he says that 
 Gothic is the most perfect style of building that ever 
 has or ever can exist ; or with Mr. Lethaby when he 
 declares in his excellent ** Mediaeval Art " that our 
 Gothic cathedrals are " more than buildings, more 
 than art,'' that '' their seeming perfections are but 
 parts of a larger perfection," and that " from which- 
 
 239 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 ever point of view we may approach them the great 
 cathedrals satisfy us." We should observe, once 
 and for all, that no really first-class art or first-class 
 poetry could by any possibility have issued from 
 Northern Europe in the twelfth or thirteenth 
 century, because the intellectual ripeness which goes 
 to the making of first-rate art and poetry did not 
 there and then exist. We should not pretend that 
 Gothic religion, even, could satisfy us any more ; 
 for if there is one thing certain to-day it is that 
 religion henceforth must include the mind, that it 
 must express the intellectual as well as the spiritual, 
 and be the result of the harmonious development of 
 a man's whole nature. We should feel that in these 
 days less than ever can Gothic content us. For thj 
 work of the past century, its discoveries and inven- 
 tions and science, have rendered isolation henceforth 
 impossible, and our participation in the life and 
 ideas of Europe inevitable. In a word, the spirit of 
 the age is making for expansion. It has outgrown 
 Gothic, and, unless we would lay up for ourselves 
 the sure unhappiness which attends the resolve to 
 cleave to that which time has resolved to abandon, 
 we must do the same. 
 
 But, allowing all this, there would be other respects 
 in which Gothic architecture would gain heavily. 
 By putting it back amid its own surroundings we 
 should endow it once more with human interest and 
 significance. The theory it embodied, the theory 
 that eternal truths can be expressed in terms of 
 action, may have been a delusion. We know now 
 that it was a delusion. Nevertheless it was a great and 
 splendid delusion. For a century it was acclaimed ; 
 240 
 
THE RISE OF THE RENAISSANCE 
 for a second century it was clung to ; during a 
 third it was gradually abandoned. During these 
 three centuries this great delusion dominates the life 
 of Europe and of this mighty influence Gothic 
 architecture is the sole adequate surviving manifes- 
 tation. Here lies its true and lasting value. It is 
 the clue to the secret of three centuries of history. 
 The unanimity of the impulse behind it gives it a 
 human and historical significance unparalleled in 
 art. If we accept this as its claim upon our regard, 
 though to do this will involve a full recognition of 
 the limitations which the style shares with its age, 
 we may find that it will gain in human interest far 
 more than it will lose in aesthetic glamour. 
 
 241 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 SCULPTURE AND THE MODERN MIND 
 
 Breakdown of classic intellectualism : West and East in 
 contact : The West imbibes the Eastern thought of spiritual 
 vision : Effect seen in Hellenistic sculpture : Character of 
 that sculpture : Its now indefinite hopes and fears : Loss 
 of the old serenity and calm : Parallel between Hellenistic 
 and Renaissance art : The Florentine intellectualism : The 
 presence of a spiritual religion in the midst of it : Consequent 
 inability to realise the classic ideal : Savonarola : Kis 
 teaching and influence : Lorenzo the Magnificent : Blending 
 of spiritual and pagan motives : Michelangelo : The conflict 
 in his art between the act of definition and thought which 
 refuses definition : He expresses the conflicting ideals of his 
 
 age 
 
 IN an earlier chapter something was said of the 
 intellectual nature of sculpture and the consequent 
 affinity which existed between the art of sculpture 
 and the Greek temperament. The Greek tempera- 
 ment, it was pointed out, in love with definition, 
 essentially intellectual, addicted to clear-cut ideas 
 on all subjects, and instinctively distrusting the 
 necessary vagueness of emotional apprehension, was 
 a medium by which all motives and conceptions 
 were prepared and made ready for the sculptor. 
 Greek ideas on all subjects are exact and definite. 
 They possess, that is to say, the attributes of form. 
 This being so, the sculptor has no preparatory 
 struggles to go through to consolidate his vision. 
 Thoughts which have been given exact form meet the 
 2|3 
 
SCULPTURE AND THE MODERN MIND 
 
 art of form half way and drop into marble almost 
 of their own accord. 
 
 But if this is so, if Greek sculpture is governed 
 and conditioned by the clear-thoughted quality of 
 the Greek intellect, how did the sculpture fare when 
 Greek intellectualism lost its classic purity ? The 
 change in the Greek outlook, as the reader knows, 
 followed, and is evidently dependent on certain 
 political events. The conquests of Alexander to- 
 wards the close of the fourth century B.C. brought 
 the East and West in contact, and it is on that 
 account rather than in their magnitude and extent 
 that those conquests constitute one of the most 
 momentous events in history. Already, it is true, 
 the Greek had shot his bolt. He had worked at the 
 intellectual vein until he had worked it out. By 
 the exercise of its own intellectual methods the 
 classic mind was brought to a recognition of the 
 insufficiency of a purely intellectual interpretation of 
 life, and to a dim perception, even, of the faculties 
 which take cognisance of the infinite. On the 
 other hand, the emotional and spiritual side of life, 
 stirred already, was of a sudden stimulated by the 
 infusion of Eastern ideas, and, thus reinforced, 
 burst the barriers which intellectualism had con- 
 structed for its own defence. The Macedonian 
 Imperialism opened to the Greek a new world of 
 ideas. The view of life which he now found him- 
 self in contact with was precisely the view which 
 the Classic Age had so consistently discountenanced 
 and the classic intellect had so severely held in 
 check. Already disenchanted, however, with his 
 own ideas, he proceeded to assimilate Eastern ones, 
 
 243 
 
THE WORKS OF AiAN 
 and especially he thirstily quaffed at the spring of 
 mystical thought of which the East is the abound- 
 ing and perennial source. 
 
 It is always the case that spiritual and emotional 
 influences, more impalpable in their nature, are 
 less distinct in their modes of action than in- 
 tellectual and rational influences. Of the two 
 classes of ideas which the Greek race has developed 
 or transmitted, the intellectual class, coincident 
 with its national unity and expressed in definite 
 terms, seems, at least, of far the greatest import- 
 ance. Still, the more carefully the reader considers 
 the nature of the conflicting impulses which have 
 controlled the life of Europe, and the more he 
 searches for the causes of the difference between 
 classic and modern life, the greater will be the 
 weight he will probably attach to the interpretative 
 work of the Greeks in the spiritual sphere, for the 
 greater will seem the effect of the current of Eastern 
 emotionalism to which the Greeks acted as con- 
 ductors. 
 
 It is not necessary here to enter into an account 
 of Graeco-Oriental ideas ; what we have to note is 
 that, from the time of the breaking down of the 
 barriers between East and West, the simplicity and 
 precision which had accrued to classic thought 
 from its resolute rejection of the infinite and the 
 abstract, and its resolute insistence on the concrete 
 and the definite, were rendered impossible by the 
 admission into the Western mind of the Eastern 
 mystical thought of spiritual vision. This was fatal 
 to the reign of intellectualism, for it dissolved the 
 very limits which had held and contained in- 
 244 
 
SCULPTURE AND THE MODERN MIND 
 
 tellectualism. Henceforth the West was never to 
 be free from a haunting consciousness of the in- 
 finite, never to be really happy and at rest in the 
 world of appearances. Immerse herself though she 
 might in her studies and sciences, propose though 
 she might intellectual solutions of all problems and 
 enigmas, there were yet, mixed in her blood, needs 
 which intellect could not satisfy and aspirations to 
 which intellect could never respond ; so that, to 
 this day, her moments of greatest intellectual 
 achievement are quite lacking in the pagan calm- 
 ness and sincerity, and the sickening conviction is 
 never far from her that the very modes of intel- 
 lectual perception are themselves questionable. 
 
 In Hellenistic sculpture the change in the mind 
 of the age is at once apparent. Standing on the 
 threshold of the movement, the last of the great 
 Greeks, the last preserver of the tradition of classic 
 self-control, yet shaken, already, by new thoughts 
 and emotions, one of the most interesting figures 
 in the art of this epoch is undoubtedly Lysippus. 
 The portraits of Alexander which remain to us from 
 his hand or school inseparably connect the names 
 of the sculptor and the king. On independent 
 testimony, however, it seems evident that the 
 sculptor was working as early as 368, and there is no 
 evidence to show that he lived long enough to profit 
 or suffer materially by the current of ideas for which 
 his great patron opened a path. Mr. Gardner places 
 his activity between the years 366 and 316. Yet 
 even on Lysippus the shadow of the future falls. 
 The antique type, self-sufficient, calmly posed, the 
 finest vindication the world has seen of the unaided 
 
 24s 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 dignity of man, this type, in which the most human 
 of the arts had, as it were, its stronghold, is for 
 Lysippus already obsolete. The traits that engage 
 attention are already those which hint at the 
 mystery of the human lot. They are the subtle, 
 pathetic and wistful traits which disclose them- 
 selves in individual expression, and are conveyed 
 in the slightest and most sensitive inflections of a 
 lip, an eyebrow or a nostril. While the ideal of 
 Phidias and his contemporaries suggests a fixity 
 and assurance of thought amounting almost to 
 philosophic dogma, the ideal of Lysippus and his 
 contemporaries suggests, on the contrary, the be- 
 ginning of a search, a quest, a groping in the void. 
 Hellenistic art, closely following on Lysippus, is 
 itself divided in its aims. On the one hand, the 
 ancient tradition, drained of vitality yet preserving 
 something of its prestige, tends, as is always the way 
 in such cases, to harden and stereotype into fixed 
 generalisations ; on the other, the new experimental 
 impulse, inclining to the exploration of subtle ideas 
 and shades of character, wears down ever more irre- 
 mediably the old bounds and limitations. In his 
 recent book on Greek sculpture, Mr. Gardner ob- 
 serves that during the earlier part of the Hellenistic 
 age the influence of Praxiteles, Scopas and Lysippus 
 remains paramount, though variously blended : 
 
 "The isolation of the various schools seems to 
 have been to a great extent broken down ; and as 
 after the conquests of Alexander, first a Panhellenic 
 and then even a cosmopolitan spirit prevailed, so in 
 sculpture also it would depend more upon the in- 
 246 
 
SCULPTURE AND THE MODERN MIND 
 dividual predilections of the artist than on his local 
 origin to which of the earlier masters he looked 
 chiefly for inspiration. Much might also depend 
 upon the subject with which he was dealing. If 
 grace and beauty of form were his chief aim, he 
 would follow the lead of Praxiteles ; if passion and 
 dramatic force, that of Scopas ; while those who 
 sought cither to carry still further the special study 
 of athletic types, or to commemorate historical 
 events by monumental sculptures, looked mainly to 
 Lysippus as their master." 
 
 Mr. Gardner adds that the Pergamene school, though 
 owing much to Scopas, should be ranked among 
 the followers of Lysippus. It may, however, be 
 pointed out that all this, though true, is open to 
 misinterpretation. If the Hellenistic style is to be 
 recognised as a distinct phase or development in 
 the history of sculpture it must be associated with 
 a distinct motive. It is, no doubt, difficult to do 
 this, because no hard and fast line of separation 
 between this and the earlier style is anywhere trace- 
 able. The trio of great sculptors who served as the 
 models of early Hellenistic art were themselves in 
 process of abandoning the ancient ideals of the 
 Greek race, and there is some doubt whether to call 
 them, in certain aspects of their work, the last of 
 the Greeks or the first of the Hellenists. Still, a 
 growth, though gradual, may attain a point at 
 which it is open to fresh classification. Hellenism, 
 in the evolution of Greek sculpture, marks such a 
 point. Mr. Gardner would, I think, agree that what 
 is vital and distinctive in the Hellenist movement is 
 
 247 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 not so much the imitative traits in it and its cling- 
 ing to precedent examples as the fact that it exhibits 
 a growing impatience of the classical tradition, and 
 an increasing endeavour to reach out into hitherto 
 unexplored regions of thought and emotion. With 
 regard to the Pergamene school, Mr. Gardner sup- 
 plies us with an illustration of the warrior's head in 
 the British Museum, on which he makes the follow- 
 ing significant comments : 
 
 " In the intense expression of the eyes, and the 
 way they are shadowed by the brow, we recognise a 
 treatment derived from Scopas; but in the rough 
 and matted hair, the knotted and exaggerated ren- 
 dering of sinews and veins, and the restless and 
 mobile brow, there is a contrast to the restraint and 
 moderation which is never absent from fourth- 
 century work, even if it be as vigorous as the 
 Tegea heads or the portrait of Alexander. The 
 modern effect produced by such a head as this, in 
 which 
 
 ' New hopes shine through the flesh they fray, 
 New fears aggrandise the rags and tatters,' 
 
 anticipates in many ways the Christian art of a 
 later date, and suggests at the same time that the 
 reason why such things are not found in Hellenic 
 art is not because earlier sculptors could not but 
 because they would not produce them." 
 
 The unruly influence of the new spiritual thoughts 
 which were coming in could not be better in- 
 dicated ; but how could the earlier sculptors have 
 been open to such an influence ? The sense of 
 248 
 
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^H|^ ' 
 
 ■■^H 
 
 
 '"•^JSliC^j^^^^^^^B 
 
 
 
 P? 
 
 
 ^^ki^. 
 
 
 Warrior's Head. Late Greek work of the era when classic thought 
 was admittifig and deing troubled by Eastern emotionalism 
 
 SPECIMEN OF HELLENISTIC SCULPTURE. BRITISH MUSEUM p.2^S 
 
SCULPTURE AND THE MODERN MIND 
 struggle and effort, the new hopes and new fears 
 which distinguish this Hellenistic work, and which 
 ally it so obviously to modern examples, are the 
 characteristics, the note, of the life of Hellenism. 
 How could the earlier generations, which knew 
 nothing of these hopes and fears, embody them in 
 form ? How could they give utterance to hopes 
 they had never entertained and fears they had never 
 experienced ? Does there not seem here to be some 
 lack of clearness in Mr. Gardner's analysis, and does 
 not that lack of clearness arise from his not having 
 held sufficiently in view the mental conditions out 
 of which the old and new sculpture arose ? 
 
 Suppose we try to state the case, putting the 
 mental factor first. Greek sculpture, at its prime 
 and in its great days, was the consequence and 
 effect of the thought of its age. That thought, 
 nobly rational in character, was distinct in its pro- 
 cesses and definite in its statements. The art that 
 came to meet the thought coincided exactly with 
 it in character, and hence it follows that Greek 
 sculpture of this period, whatever may be its pos- 
 sible limitations, is the most perfect phase through 
 which the art has passed. But by degrees the 
 thought itself changed. Worn thin already, it 
 yielded to an influx of spiritual ideas and emotions 
 administered through contact with the East, and 
 forthwith a corresponding change affected art. 
 The new ideas endeavoured, in their turn, to get 
 themselves expressed in marble. But they were 
 not, like the old ideas, adapted to such a transition 
 Indefinite, tentative, vague, they rebelled against the 
 limits of form, and refused to submit themselves 
 
 249 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 to exact definition, and hence the restlessness, the 
 struggle and the effort which we distinguish as the 
 marks of the Hellenistic style. 
 
 Taking this view of the matter, we may say that 
 here again we have a sufficiently vivid illustration 
 of contemporary life and thought offered us by art. 
 In dealing with the rise of Greek art I drew atten- 
 tion to the striking representation which that art, in 
 its growing naturalism and sense of reality, gives us 
 of the dawn of the intellectual faculty. Intellect 
 has played a great part in the world since the days 
 of the Greeks, and in the new realism of early 
 Greek art, working like a leaven among the old 
 artistic conventions, we are able to observe almost 
 its birth and the character of its earliest efforts. So 
 in the case of Hellenistic art we are conscious also 
 of being present at a birth ; but it is the spiritual 
 faculty, intellect's great rival, whose advent we now 
 discern. The old barriers break up, depths open 
 where a hard surface had been, new aspirations 
 invade men's minds, and a sense of spiritual mystery 
 falls upon and enwraps them. For the first time 
 Greek thought becomes troubled and inarticulate. 
 Through a thousand channels the mysticism which 
 was to exert so powerful an influence on Europe's 
 development was filtering westward. Such are the 
 influences to which, in the new style of sculpture, 
 the marble responds. It is but a picture, after all, 
 of the mind of its age. Ruffled already by the 
 soul's agitation, Hellenistic sculpture is embarked 
 on a voyage of discovery that is not ended yet. 
 " Modern," Mr. Gardner calls it, and modern indeed 
 it is, for the problem of how to express infinite 
 250 
 
The yielding of the classic sense. Showing the weakening of the feeling for 
 form and the 7-estraints it necessitates. 
 
 FROM THE COLUMN OF M. AURELIUS. MIRACLE OF THE RAIN /. 250 
 
SCULPTURE AND THE MODERN MIND 
 
 ideas in terms of finite form is the problem that 
 occupies us stilh 
 
 I would call attention briefly to the later treat- 
 ment of that problem. It scarcely needs to be 
 stated that the dominating characteristic of the 
 Italian Renaissance is the spirit of vivid intellec- 
 tualism which is so strongly reminiscent of the 
 Greek prime. The actual results obtained by 
 Renaissance thought were nothing very consider- 
 able, and stood often on not over-secure founda- 
 tions, but the impetus it gave to the mind of 
 Europe was incalculable. To its guesses we owe 
 our certainties. The Renaissance is the greatest 
 extant testimony to the truth that far more happiness 
 is derived from the activity of the mind itself than 
 from any fruits which that activity may yield. Man 
 is ever in search of happiness, and it was the dis- 
 covery of the long-forgotten fact, that intellectual 
 activity is a source of happiness, which placed Italy, 
 and especially Florence, in the position of guide 
 and mentor to the rest of Europe. For the rest, 
 the character of this mental activity, in which 
 Florence led the way, is sufficiently obvious. Intel- 
 lect is the faculty which defines, observes, analyses* 
 There is little that is sensuous and emotional in 
 Florentine thought. It is active, not passive. It 
 does not receive impressions, but seeks distinctions. 
 It is subtle and fine in analysis. It does not 
 regard any subject as beyond the reach of intel- 
 lectual interpretation, nor does it greatly care to 
 follow any line of inquiry beyond the phase of 
 definition. In short, as was of course bound to be 
 the case, there are the strongest mental resem- 
 
 251 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 blances, amounting in many respects to identity, 
 between the age of intellect's birth and the age of 
 intellect's awakening ; between the Athens of the 
 fifth century B.C. and the Florence of the fifteenth 
 century A.D. 
 
 Considering this similitude in mental stimulus 
 and the spirit of the age, we should naturally look 
 for and expect a corresponding degree of similitude 
 in artistic product. And this similitude we, of 
 course, find. Florentine art, like Attic art, is essen- 
 tially an art of form. Form advanced to meet 
 Florentine ideas almost as readily as it had advanced 
 to meet Greek ideas. 
 
 Between Attic and Florentine sculpture there is 
 this fundamental resemblance, that both are prose- 
 cuted with the zest and natural ease with which a 
 people adopt the kind of art suited to their genius. 
 Florentine painting takes the lead of other Italian 
 painting, but still other Italian painting exists, and 
 is important. But when we come to the art which 
 is pre-eminently, by the laws of its own nature, the 
 art of form — to sculpture, that is to say — Florence 
 practically monopolises the whole field. It is here 
 she is most " in her element." Though the sister 
 cities of Pisa and Siena made the first definite start, 
 
 "Florence by the thirteenth century had taken 
 the lead ; the sculpture of the Renaissance had its 
 birth here, here it went through all the phases of its 
 development, and here, finally, its transition to the 
 baroque was prepared. As antique sculpture cul- 
 minates in Greece, so that of the Christian epoch 
 finds its crowning expression in the plastic art of 
 252 
 
SCULPTURE AND THE MODERN MIND 
 Florence. In two cities only has that branch of art 
 been able to attain to its full and glorious prime in 
 unrestrained freedom — in Athens and in Florence." 
 
 The general truth of these observations, taken 
 from Professor Bode's recent work on Florentine 
 sculpture, will not be questioned. It will not be 
 denied that in spontaneity and fluency Florentine 
 sculpture approaches Athenian.] 
 
 Yet, if both speak the same language with the 
 same freedom, they speak it with a very different 
 accent. The course of Florentine sculpture is ruled 
 by none of the high and grave conceptions of the 
 functions of the art which carried such weight with 
 the Greeks. It is restless where Greek art is serene, 
 experimental and tentative where Greek art is steadily 
 coherent, uncertain of its own aims and purposes 
 where Greek art is calmly self-confident. Critics 
 have argued that these discrepancies and defects, as 
 they apparently are, in Florentine work may have 
 been due to ignorance of the Greek masterpieces. 
 It was, it is urged, from the muddy stream of 
 Roman rather than the purer springs of Attic art 
 that the Italians drew their models in sculpture, and 
 to that taint in its source the derelictions of their 
 art should be ascribed. But can we imagine Dona- 
 tello and Michelangelo, whatever their tutelage, 
 other than they were ? The early phases of the 
 development of the art might, and no doubt would, 
 have been different. Niccolo Pisano would have 
 been the last of the Greeks instead of the last of the 
 Romans. But would that have affected the later 
 course and character of the art ? To imagine that 
 
 253 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 it could have done so is to form, it seems to me, but 
 a slighting estimate of the living forces which were 
 feeding Renaissance art. These were not, I imagine, 
 of so feeble a kind as submissively to adapt them- 
 selves to this style or that. If the first essays of 
 Renaissance sculpture accepted Roman guidance, 
 the imitative phase only lasted until the art had 
 established contact with contemporary life. The 
 Florentine sculptors of the fifteenth and sixteenth 
 centuries are no more Roman than they are Greek. 
 They are themselves. The art they practise is not 
 an imitative but an original and living art ; and it is 
 so because it is the expression of living ideas. In 
 short, it is not among extraneous influences but 
 within the life of Italy itself that we must seek for 
 the causes of the differences as well as the resem- 
 blances between Florentine and Athenian sculpture. 
 In considering the inward life of the two states in 
 connection with the art evolved by either, two points 
 of difference seem most noteworthy. Both, as we 
 have said — both Athens and Florence — were in cast 
 of thought preponderatingly intellectual ; this ex- 
 plains the bias of both in favour of the arts of form. 
 But in its control of life the intellectualism of 
 Florence went much less far than the intellectualism 
 of Athens. Athenian life aspired to regulate and 
 direct itself through the intellect, on the basis 
 of a system of rational ethics. The dictates of 
 reason in regard to right conduct and the concep- 
 tion of ideal characteristics were authoritative. 
 Now what were those characteristics ? Self-control, 
 moderation, serenity, right proportion, harmony, 
 symmetry — these, as we figure the Greek ideal man. 
 
 254 
 
Note the boldness with ivhich the expression is rendered. When it zvas a 
 question of spiritual emotion the medieval artist iimply could not go zvrong 
 SPECIMEN OF GOTHIC SCULPTURE. REIMS CATHEDRAL /. 254 
 
SCULPTURE AND THE MODERN MIND 
 are the epithets which rise to our Hps to describe 
 him. But these, as the reader will see, are words 
 very susceptible of artistic appHcation. I have 
 already attempted to deal with the influence of 
 Greek ethics on Greek art as exhibited particularly 
 in Doric architecture, and must not dilate on the 
 point here ; but the reader will see at once that 
 where we have an intellectual system of this sort in 
 authority, where symmetry and harmony and the 
 rest of them were reverenced as principles to live 
 by, there we have also a system ready made for 
 application to art ; a system which would control 
 and govern art as appropriately as it controlled and 
 governed life. In truth it is impossible for any one 
 at all open to such influences to contemplate typical 
 examples of Greek sculpture without being conscious 
 that they do in fact illustrate in their own personali- 
 ties the beauty of the ethical principles in which they 
 were conceived : without being conscious, that is to 
 say, that the Greeks turned ethical principles into 
 artistic laws. 
 
 But the Renaissance never got to this ; even 
 Florence fell far short of it. Strive as she might to 
 recapture the classic point of view Florence never 
 succeeded in reinstating the intellectual faculty in 
 its old position as ethical lawgiver to life. And 
 failing in this her sculpture pays the penalty. The 
 qualities of harmony, self-control, proportion, sym- 
 metry, and so on, not being accepted as laws of 
 life, could not be, and never were, passed on into 
 art : could not become laws of art. The loss is 
 tremendous, irreparable. There is nothing in the 
 whole range of Renaissance sculpture that touches, 
 
 25s 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 however faintly, that note of tranquil and majestic 
 self-sufficiency which belongs to the great figures of 
 the Parthenon pediment. 
 
 The loss, I say, is irreparable, and seems at a 
 blow to degrade sculpture from its ancient office of 
 a witness to the truth and a support to human 
 nature, and to cast it down among men to become 
 the instrument and prey of individual caprice. But 
 there is, as I said, a second point of difference 
 between Classic and Renaissance sculpture, and this 
 seems to offer some slight compensation for the 
 loss incurred on the first count. It need scarcely 
 be pointed out that the reason the men of the 
 Renaissance declined, or were unable, to accept a 
 rational philosophy as supreme guide to life, was 
 not because they aspired to dispense with a guide 
 altogether but because they already had one. It is 
 customary to make very light of the religion of the 
 Renaissance, and no doubt in so treating it we are 
 but following the lead of the Renaissance itself. 
 But, however lightly religion might be regarded, 
 there the religion was. In so far as men strove to 
 lean exclusively on the intellectual faculty they 
 might weaken or atrophy the religious sense in 
 them, and it is probable that if we were to analyse 
 the characters of most of the consummate villains 
 whose murders and treacheries and unbridled 
 licentiousness grace the epoch, we should find that 
 their pre-eminence in vice was the consequence of 
 their falling between the two stools of a spiritual 
 standard they had repudiated and an ethical 
 standard they had never attained to. They were 
 emancipated equally from the laws of God and man, 
 256 
 
Notice hoiv the artist's mind is concentrated on the 
 expression of spiritual emotio7t in the face of the 
 kneeling figure 
 
 VISirATION. LUCA DEI^LA ROBBIA. PISTOIA 
 
 /. 256 
 
SCULPTURE AND THE MODERN MIND 
 It would arguC; however, a superficial knowledge of 
 human nature if we were to deduce from such indivi- 
 dual examples the conclusion that Christianity as an 
 influence had ceased to operate. The signs to the 
 contrary are too many and significant to be gain- 
 said., The religious motive was constantly manifested 
 in life and constantly manifested in art. It stood, 
 weak or strong, in place of the Greek ethical motive 
 and exercised, as that had done, a direct influence 
 upon art. 
 
 But its influence was of a very different kind. 
 Being in its essence spiritural rather than intellectual, 
 it did not lend itself, as its rival had done, to the 
 process of form delineation. The Christian ideals, 
 charity, humility, surrender to God's will, &c., can- 
 not, like the classic ideals, symmetry, harmony, pro- 
 portion, be readily converted into principles of art ; 
 nor will ideas which have been dipped in the vague 
 aspirations, hopes, fears and surmises, which haunt 
 the Christianised imagination, submit to concrete 
 definition with the readiness of the clear-cut distinc- 
 tions of Greek thought. We have seen already, in the 
 case of Hellenistic sculpture, how mental indefinite- 
 ness acted on the arts of Greece, and we shall discern 
 the same phenomenon, in a more marked degree, in 
 the case of Renaissance sculpture. 
 
 If the reader will turn his attention for a moment 
 to the culmination of the Renaissance movement, he 
 will easily distinguish the existing conflict of motives 
 in the life of the age together with the effect of that 
 conflict on art. Take him for all in all, we may say 
 that II Magnifico is a worthy representative of the 
 pagan Renaissance, and that the amplitude of his 
 
 R 257 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 culture and splendour of his talents are themselves 
 a high testimony to the depth and genuineness of 
 the soil that nourished them. It was, perhaps, 
 during the period of his ascendancy that the 
 Renaissance as a revival, as an attempt, that is, 
 to live on classic ideas, most nearly achieved success. 
 A careless glance, misled by the enthusiasm and 
 animation with which the leading actors threw 
 themselves into their parts, might almost deem the 
 success complete ; but a closer scrutiny, even of 
 that enthusiasm and that animation, would quickly 
 undeceive it. For this classical fervour is in truth 
 far from the classical temper. It is too self-conscious 
 and forced, too evidently maintained by effort and 
 liable to collapse should the effort cease. It lacks the 
 classic calm and security, and its very perturbation 
 and anxiety to force the pace are certain indications 
 of the existence of a hostile presence. 
 
 As it happens, this presence also is typically repre- 
 sented. In the entrance passage of the Convent of 
 St. Mark, at Florence, there hangs a portrait at which 
 all visitors turn to glance a second time. The 
 strong, ascetic features, the large hooked nose, the 
 deep furrows of the cheek, above all the fire, ardent 
 and fierce, in the black eyes that stare intently 
 upward, are traits evidently taken from the life. 
 There is nothing in the face to win or attract, yet 
 Savonarola was a more potent influence in Florence 
 than Lorenzo himself. Though his eloquence w^as 
 almost entirely denunciatory, and his descriptions of 
 divine wrath and impending judgment frightened 
 his hearers into fits, yet the walls of his church, and 
 even the squares of the city. wer« too r:^ low to 
 258 
 
SCULPTURE AND THE MODERN MIND 
 contain the multitudes which gathered round him 
 to tremble and weep at his words. The awful 
 reality, the awful proximity, of God, was the con- 
 stant burden of his eloquence. In place of paganism, 
 in place of intellectualism, in place of the humanist 
 culture, which centred in the Villa Medici, he 
 upheld the idea of a spiritual guide, a spiritual 
 ruler, a spiritual judge. The effect of his words 
 is a proof of the ineradicable survival, even in that 
 centre of intellectualism, of the spiritual faculty. 
 A fierce spiritual reaction set in, and the whole 
 city, swept by an emotional ecstasy, surrendered 
 itself to the guidance of the instrument of God. * 
 
 There are few more striking contrasts in history 
 probably than Lorenzo and Savonarola, and the 
 scene at the former's death-bed throws that contrast 
 into striking relief. Death, we may suppose, is 
 usually a test of the sincerity of a man's opinions, 
 and the old Greeks died in their paganism as 
 calmly and sincerely as they had lived in it. But 
 the paganism of the Renaissance, though good 
 enough to live in, was no creed to die in, and with 
 the consciousness of approaching dissolution upon 
 him Lorenzo sent for the Dominican. The meeting 
 summarises the Renaissance. If we would know 
 why it is that the classic note in the Renaissance 
 strikes us as strained and overdone, why it is that 
 characters like Pico della Mirandola have the hectic 
 flush on them, why it is that the imitations of 
 classic manners, the revival of the Garden and the 
 Academy, the Aristotelian and Platonic encounters, 
 the wish even to revive the worship of the gods, and 
 all the other signs of an almost breathless enthusiasm 
 
 259 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 for the usages of paganism have something obviously 
 extravagant and excessive in them and are tinged as 
 it were with an element of play-acting, we have but 
 to call to mind the death-bed of the humanist with 
 the monk standing over it to perceive the reason. 
 The Renaissance was strained in its paganism 
 because it was not really pagan. Fain though it 
 was to persuade itself that it was what, for the 
 moment, it wanted to be, yet with all its eager pro- 
 testations it never quite succeeds. There are present 
 in the life of the age elements which no pagan 
 system can contain. We have chosen Savonarola 
 as the representative of these elements at the 
 moment of the climax of the Renaissance, but if we 
 were to revert to the eve of the movement and 
 consider the still more far-reaching effect of the 
 more spiritual teaching of a St. Francis, should we 
 not be obliged to confess that from the very first 
 the pagan experiment was doomed to failure ? 
 Indeed, might not a shrewd observer already at this 
 juncture, seeing what profound spiritual instincts 
 were inwoven in the national character, have fore- 
 told what was bound to happen ? " You have here," 
 he would have said, " something which no human 
 interpretation of life will ever satisfy. No philo- 
 sophical system, by which you think to control these 
 spiritual aspirations, but will always be liable to be 
 rent asunder by an outburst of spiritual emo- 
 tionalism." So much, without being a prophet, he 
 might have surmised ; and when, three hundred 
 years later, at the veiy moment of the intellectual 
 apogee, Florence went mad over Savonarola, and 
 the nobles and ladies burnt their finery in the 
 260 
 
Michela ngelo 
 The broken ruggedness of the man's face ajid wistful haggard 
 expression are the best comment on his work 
 
SCULPTURE AND THE MODERN MIND 
 
 market-place, and the dying prince of this world 
 sent post-haste for the custodian of the next, he 
 might have added, " I told you so." 
 
 These, then, are the two main points of difference 
 between the Classic and Renaissance life : (i) The 
 latter never succeeded in installing an intellectual 
 ethical system in command of conduct and action ; 
 but (2) in lieu of such a system it was haunted by a 
 vague, spiritually conceived faith in the will of an 
 omnipotent God. Also it is the case that this 
 contrast between Renaissance and Classic life is in 
 many ways identical with the contrast between 
 Renaissance and Classic art. Renaissance sculpture 
 is, in the first place, totally lacking in the broad 
 abstract principles which govern Greek sculpture ; 
 but, in the second place, it does reveal a spiritual 
 aspiration and a consciousness of spiritual vitality 
 such as we shall search Greek art for in vain. It 
 seems almost superfluous to illustrate these points, 
 but if we are to do so the means lie ready to our hand. 
 Lorenzo and Savonarola embody, I said, the dual 
 aspects of the Renaissance, its outward triumphant 
 paganism and its inward smouldering spirituality. 
 It remains for the greatest sculptor of the age to 
 depict the two and the conflict between them in 
 terms of visible form. To name Michelangelo in 
 this connection is enough. There is no need to 
 dilate on his appreciation of the intellectualism of 
 the Renaissance. We all know what a sense he 
 possessed for the concrete, for substance, and what 
 a passion for the science of articulation. He had, 
 if ever a man had, the temperament of the sculptor. 
 But we all know, too, what depths of spiritual 
 
 261 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 emotion underlay the mighty capacity of the man 
 and taxed and mocked its utmost efforts at definition. 
 Both points of difference I have been dealing with 
 are brought out in his work with equal force. 
 There is a truth in that old nickname the " Great 
 Barbarian " ; for if we admit, as we must admit, 
 that the Greek gift of culture consisted in the ability 
 to realise ethical laws in the dominions of art and 
 literature, there must needs appear something bar- 
 barous in a rejection as absolute as Michelangelo's 
 of any such connection. It is not possible to think 
 of the Classic principles of symmetry, harmony, 
 proportion, moderation, in presence of Michel- 
 angelo's figures. They never suggest such motives, 
 save accidentally, for they were not evolved in 
 obedience to such dictates. What to the Athenian 
 was his chief holdfast on truth and sanity is to the 
 Florentine a consideration of no interest whatsoever. 
 On the other hand, was ever sculpture more racked 
 with spiritual indefinable impulses than are these 
 tragic forms ? We are carried back again to that 
 hour when first the Classic intellectualism broke 
 down and new hopes and fears were struggling for 
 articulation. In spirit Hellenistic sculpture is far 
 closer than Hellenic to the Renaissance. It consists 
 of the same elements, and the same problem, how to 
 embody spiritual ideas in terms of form, perplexes 
 and baffles it. There is a profound similarity in life 
 between the two periods, which works itself out into 
 a corresponding resemblance in art. The typical 
 warrior's head, to which allusion has been made, 
 the head, as Mr. Gardner describes it, of the " rough 
 and matted hair," of the "knotty and exaggerated 
 262 
 
While thinking like the Greeks in terms of form Michelangelo ivas 
 haunted by emotions and confiicis of the soul ivhich ivould ill go into 
 that medium 
 
 FROM THE MONUMENT OF LORENZO. FLORENCE (i) f. 262 
 

 I- 
 
SCULPTURE AND THE MODERN MIND 
 
 rendering of sinews and veins," of the "restless and 
 mobile brow '' : this head, so "vigorous," so " intense 
 in expression," yet so lacking in the " restraint and 
 moderation " of earlier Greek work which, at once 
 torn and inspired by strange hopes and fears, has 
 such a " modern effect," and " anticipates in many 
 ways the Christian art of a later date " — this head 
 might have come straight from the workshop of 
 Michelangelo, and had it done so would pass muster 
 as an entirely characteristic example of his art. So 
 strangely similar upon art are the effects of similar 
 thought-currents in life. 
 
 In dealing with classic sculpture I ventured to 
 suggest that the study of art would derive consider- 
 able additional interest if it were more often studied 
 in conjunction with, and as an expression of, the 
 life of its own age and place. That suggestion I 
 would here reiterate. It is probable that the ideas 
 we have been discussing may have occurred to many 
 of my readers before : they are such at least as might 
 readily occur to any one interested in these sub- 
 jects. Nevertheless they can scarcely be too much 
 pondered and dwelt upon. The added significance 
 they are able to pour into the art they deal with is 
 incalculable. A great genius, poet or artist, is the 
 medium through which an age speaks. The figures 
 of Michelangelo incarnate the very genius of the 
 Renaissance. There, in the anatomy, the fore- 
 shortening, the elaboration of flesh and sinew, is the 
 play of intellect and love of science we know so 
 well ; and there, in furrowed brow and mobile lip, 
 is the spiritual anxiety and restlessness which also, 
 though we oflen ignore it, is blent inextricably with 
 
 263 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 
 the spirit of the age. In a work entitled " A Hundred 
 Masterpieces of Sculpture/' which I commend to 
 the reader's notice as one of the best sketches of the 
 history of sculpture recently written, there occurs a 
 passage on Michelangelo from an unnamed source, 
 in which this clash and jar of motives is expressed 
 with entire comprehension : 
 
 " Dans les marbres froids ou bout son ame altiere, 
 Comme il a fait courir avec un grand frisson 
 La colere d'un Dieu vaincu par la matiere." 
 
 We are not to think of these great creations as works 
 of individual genius only, but as nourished and in- 
 spired by tides of contemporary thought and emotion. 
 Their agitation is the agitation of a century. Not 
 only do the science and intellectualism of that age, its 
 love of analysing and defining, its keen appreciation 
 of the significance of matter, receive at the hands 
 of the great Florentine their complete embodiment ; 
 just as truly and significantly representative is the 
 spiritual anxiety and perturbation of his art. These 
 are the very traits acting upon life. The cowled 
 figure hanging over the Magnificent's death-bed is 
 an element, in its fleshly form, of the [art we are 
 gazing at, and as for the denunciations of a material- 
 istic age which ring from the pulpit of St. Mark's, 
 what are they but the audible utterances of that very 
 '* colere d'un Dieu vaincu par la matiere " to which 
 the marble gives mute expression ? 
 *■ Only, perhaps, if we would view the matter in its 
 right aspect, we may question the word "vanquished." 
 The struggle between matter and spirit, not the defeat 
 of spirit by matter, seems the message of the har- 
 264 
 
Always in his works, together ivith the plastic sense, is the sense of i-estless 
 struggle, and spiritual perturbation 
 
 FIGURE IN ROOF OF SISTINE CHAPEL (i) p. 264 
 
The same co7nbmation^ the feeling for form almost swamped in spiritual 
 panic and the dark impending chiaroscuro 
 
 ADAM AND EVE. SISTINE CHAPEL 
 
 (II) /. 264 
 
SCULPTURE AND THE MODERN MIND 
 
 assed but unconquerable marble, as it is the message 
 of the harassed but unconquerable monk. Gone is 
 the old sufficing ethical code, the old clear-sightedness 
 and calm, the old agreement between philosophy and 
 art. We are embarked upon the troubled tide of 
 modern thought, and the still unanswered riddle, 
 how to reconcile spirit and matter, infinite ideas 
 with finite expression ; in a word, how to combine 
 the thought of the East and of the West, has already 
 presented itself for solution. 
 
 2^5 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 PAINTING AND THE INTELLECTUAL 
 MOVEMENT 
 
 Manual dexterity of modern art : Consequent superabundance 
 and confusion of subject-matter : Contrast with earlier 
 creative epochs : These were protected from redundancy by 
 their own ignorance : They had not our fatal executive 
 facility : Course of Italian painting from Giotto to Raphael : 
 Development of painting keeps pace with intellectual de- 
 velopment : The new precision and accuracy of intellectual 
 vision : Seeing with the mind : Need of this in order to reaUse 
 and represent naturally : By what degrees the eyes of men 
 during the Renaissance were opened : Man himself the centre 
 of the movement : Renaissance art reahses first man, then 
 man's handiwork, and finally nature : It keeps pace in its 
 progress with the intellectual advance of the age 
 
 IT is the peculiarity of modern art that to an entire 
 doubt as to its own aims and principles it unites 
 an extraordinarily highly developed gift of manual 
 dexterity and great technical knowledge. It can 
 paint or carve anything it likes exactly in the manner 
 it likes ; at the same time it does not know in the 
 least what to paint or carve, or with what purpose 
 to paint or carve it. This combination of a practised 
 and fluent hand with a vaguely groping and dis- 
 tracted mind is comparatively new in the history of 
 art. Its consequences have only been realised since 
 the successful pre-Raphaelite revolt against authority 
 and law let loose upon us the whole flood of a 
 hitherto controlled and organised dexterity. At the 
 266 
 
THE INTELLECTUAL MOVEMENT 
 
 same time the conjunction is a natural one, for the 
 very possession of unlimited powers of execution 
 is bound to render the task of evolving a sound 
 and authoritative theory of art in some ways more 
 difficult. In the rise of an art, when its attempts to 
 express life are attended by a very slowly yielding 
 ignorance of how to express anything at all, and by 
 a total lack of fluency and facility in execution, this 
 very ignorance and lack of fluency are a safeguard 
 to it. They keep it in the right way because they 
 insure that all subjects and objects delineated shall be 
 such as possess unusual importance and significance, 
 such as strike the artist's attention with peculiar 
 and reiterated force, and which it is worth making a 
 determined effort to portray. In this way a slowly 
 moving and laborious art is driven by its own short- 
 comings to practise methods of selection. It is 
 saved from the accidental and the trivial, from 
 distracting detail and meaningless superfluity, not 
 because it knows better than to yield to their solici- 
 tations, but because it does not possess the skill to 
 depict such things. It goes right because it cannot 
 go wrong. Throughout the earlier stages at least of 
 the Greek epoch, as throughout the Renaissance, it 
 is very apparent that art is steadied and kept to a 
 certain path because this is its easiest course. It 
 does not wander, it does not indulge in those 
 individual eccentricities and whims which efi^ectually 
 disperse the force of a creative movement, simply 
 because it cannot. The hand has not acquired 
 the facility ofj?" execution which will permit of the 
 representation of such slight themes. 
 
 If the reader will glance at the course of Italian 
 
 267 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 
 painting from Giotto to Raphael, he will easily 
 perceive how the most fruitful and powerful tradition 
 in Christian art was shepherded for generations by 
 the ignorance and lack of dexterity of its practitioners. 
 The development of painting in Italy keeps pace with 
 the development of the intellectual faculty. It has 
 its rise in the first movement of intellect ; and as 
 intellect moves on step by step, widening the range 
 of its observation and interest, so painting moves 
 hand in hand with it, recording its conquests, and 
 in its own artistic progress registering [the intellec- 
 tual progress of the age. The limitations in early 
 Renaissance painting are limitations in intellectual 
 development. They stand for the"^ as yet dark 
 places of the mind, and chronicle the steps of a 
 transition from a state of intellectual indifference to 
 a state of complete intellectual sensibility. 
 
 This mental transition and the degrees by which 
 it is accomplished are the governing factors in 
 Renaissance art. A'" great intellectual awakening," 
 as we call the Renaissance, implies an aroused con- 
 sciousness of the character, form and substance of 
 things. It substitutes for the vague acceptance of 
 appearances common to the pre-intellectual age, an 
 active examination of structure and contents, and 
 for indefinite emotions definite ideas. " Moving 
 about in worlds not realised," may express the 
 mental attitude of a pre-intellectual age ; to realise 
 the world is the task of intellect. 
 
 And in the carrying out of this task mind and 
 eye work together and constantly act and re-act 
 upon each other. He who looks at things with the 
 eye of intellect sees them with a new precision and 
 268 
 
THE INTELLECTUAL MOVEMENT 
 accuracy. He is driven by the intellect itself so to 
 see them. Intent on probing into the nature of 
 things, on divining their purpose and composition, 
 and whence they came and whither they are going, 
 and a thousand other facts about them, the intellect 
 must needs in all these matters employ the eye to 
 collect data for it, and this in turn results in a new 
 discernment and discriminative power imparted to 
 the sense of sight. So that the desire of the mind 
 to distinguish accurately and define exactly grow 
 by degrees into unconscious properties of vision, 
 and seeing with the mind, as it may be called, 
 becomes seeing in a new and more positive sense 
 of the word. 
 
 One main effect then of that great intellectual 
 awakening which we date from the Renaissance 
 was that it taught men to see in the intellectual 
 way, with a new exactitude and discrimination and 
 with a suddenly enhanced comprehension of the 
 reality of what they looked at. But we are not to 
 suppose that the intellectual awakening itself came 
 all at once. Men did not get up one fine morning 
 and gaze about them with a full-fledged curiosity 
 which embraced equally all objects in view. No, 
 the awakening came gradually, and step by step. 
 It challenged the most obviously interesting and 
 important things first, and by degrees extended its 
 survey to others more remote. Now the most 
 obviously interesting and important thing to mankind 
 is man. Accordingly it is upon man that dawning 
 intellectual curiosity first concentrates its attention. 
 Man's aspect and appearance, the motives of his 
 conduct, the causes of his happiness or unhappi- 
 
 269 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 ness, his past history and future fate, the evil or 
 beneficent influences that attend upon him, these 
 are the questions which the conscious attention 
 that springs from intellect first proceeds to examine. 
 Love of human intercourse and delight in human 
 society are the most attractive characteristics of 
 what, for this reason, has been well called the 
 Humanist movement. As a matter of mental cul- 
 ture and thought, this centrality of man gave a 
 definite point of view to the intellectualism of the 
 Renaissance. The importance and significance of 
 all objects were calculated in terms of human 
 relationship. Those things which partook inti- 
 mately of the human lot were more important ; those 
 which remotely affected it were less important j 
 while those which were so far removed as to be 
 apparently cut off from it altogether were devoid 
 of any importance or significance whatever. 
 
 This is the course of development followed by 
 the Renaissance intellectually, and the intellectual 
 expansion, with its gradual conquests and ordered 
 motion, is what determines the course of Renais- 
 sance painting : 
 
 The awakening of intellect, as was pointed out, 
 came by degrees; therefore, since the power to 
 draw rightly depends on intellect, that, too, must 
 come by degrees. The awakening intellect ex- 
 tended itself in successive, more or less definable, 
 radiations from man, its source and centre, to man's 
 handiwork, from man's handiwork to familiar and 
 domesticated nature, and finally to more remote 
 and wilder nature. The power to draw rightly 
 must follow the same lines of development 
 270 
 
THE INTELLECTUAL MOVEMENT 
 It should be easy to show, in brief outline, that 
 it did so. So long as the Byzantine tradition lasts, 
 nothing, not even the figures, is realised intellectually. 
 The attitudes, stiff and angular, are not real attitudes. 
 The long cadaverous faces are not real faces. The 
 reiteration of the same sterotyped features allies 
 such treatment with the Oriental in all ages. In- 
 tellect has not got hold of the subject-matter of 
 these drawings. It is before the awakening. Ere 
 the thirteenth century is out, however, there are 
 signs of the approaching change. These first occur 
 in the figures, which begin to break their fiat, hiero- 
 glyphical postures and come to life. They soon 
 appear in various attitudes instead of always in the 
 same attitude, they are of various types instead of 
 always the same type, and the faces express various 
 intelligible human emotions instead of no emotions 
 at all. They move and act, stiffly it is true, and 
 within a very limited range of movement ; still the 
 consciousness of their real nature begins to stir in 
 them. It is, I cannot help remarking, for one who 
 looks upon art as the expression of life, one of the 
 most touching and pathetic moments in the whole 
 of her history. Of all discoveries none ever brought 
 in such immediate, rich results as the discovery of 
 man by man. The interest of man, of the motives, 
 emotions and ideas that stir his mind, that change 
 and are to be traced in the expression of his face, 
 that prompt the appropriate postures of his body 
 and gestures of his limbs; all this, the intimate, 
 intellectual recognition of all this, as compared 
 with the unconscious acceptance of it, is the new 
 stimulus which the mind of the age is applying to 
 
 271 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 
 the eye. It is a time of extraordinarily keen delight 
 in human fellowship and intercourse, a time when 
 the pleasures of society begin to be lirst consciously 
 felt and then to be cultivated and enhanced. A new 
 ideal of life and manners, a new comprehension 
 and power of sympathy, a new gentleness and 
 urbanity are coming into being. We conceive the 
 youth of the Renaissance gazing at each other with 
 eyes in which delight and a dawning recognition 
 are dispelling the old insensibility. Such was the 
 gaze by which the Oriental emaciations of Byzantine 
 art were roused to life. " Those are not real cheeks : 
 real cheeks are round and ruddy. Those are not 
 real eyes, nor that a real body, nor are those limbs 
 and hands and feet real." Thus the artist felt ; 
 but before he, as spokesman of his age, felt it, 
 what a new power of observation must have come 
 into men's eyes, and with how hitherto unfelt a 
 desire to appreciate the significance and beauty of 
 faces and forms and expression and gestures must 
 men and women in those days have begun to gaze 
 at each other I 
 
 This is the first step. Man lives for man in real 
 life, and forthwith man begins to live for the artist 
 on his canvas. But not much else lives. For the 
 most part the flat gold background, blotting out all 
 save the figures, still meets the claims of the universe 
 with a blank negation. Soon, however, interest 
 spreads. The works of men's hands form, as we 
 said, the next sphere it is to conquer, and of such 
 works that which far eclipsed all others in the 
 estimation of citizens so proud of the civic dignity 
 and grandeur of their several cities as the Italians, 
 272 
 
THE INTELLECTUAL MOVEMENT 
 was necessarily architecture. From the earliest 
 days of the Renaissance, architecture, as must be 
 the case in all great epochs of art, was the pursuit 
 and industry which most engaged attention, and 
 the new spirit that henceforth began to animate this 
 art is peculiarly characteristic of the change of 
 mental attitude of the age. 
 
 Accordingly this is the subject in which, after the 
 figures, painting makes most decisive and earliest 
 progress. Before the thirteenth century is out 
 architectural accessories are introduced as a setting 
 to the awakening figures. They are invariably exe- 
 cuted with a new care and closeness of attention, 
 the mouldings and details being drawn with fas- 
 tidious precision, while the character of the structure 
 is fully realised and rendered. It is, indeed, often 
 over-realised, and with too complete a conscious- 
 ness of the function and formation of columns, 
 architraves, and cornices ; the consequence being 
 that buildings, in Renaissance painting generally, 
 are apt to assert themselves too vigorously, and 
 with something of the harsh exactitude of an archi- 
 tect's plans. So enamoured is the artist of the 
 intellectual interest of his subject that he cannot 
 deny himself the pleasure of articulating every 
 detail of it. More, he cannot help introducing it 
 even amongst the most incongruous surroundings. 
 Stately pleasure domes or classic temples must start 
 up in the wilderness, or be perched on inaccessible 
 crags : and the crib at Bethlehem must be sheltered 
 by a Corinthian pediment. 
 
 And what renders the strength and realism of the 
 architectural drawing the more remarkable is that 
 
 s 27j 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 
 the scenes amid which it commonly occurs are, as 
 regards their natural features, rendered, at first with 
 an entire, and later with a partial lack of compre- 
 hension. The eye turns from some difficult, elabo- 
 rate structure, a triumph of realistic painting, to a 
 river indicated by parallel white lines with fish cruis- 
 ing about on the surface, or to a foreground of a 
 dull, whitish grey, in texture neither soil nor rock, 
 but of the nature, apparently, of pipe-clay, or to 
 certain shapeless peaks in the background, of the 
 same white clay as the foreground, with two or 
 three trees, in make and shape like enormous black 
 toad-stools, poised on their summits. It would not 
 be possible to have marked for us more clearly the 
 limits to which intellectual reahsm had reached. 
 On the one^ side of those limits all is reality and 
 accuracy, on the other all is dull [^insensibility and 
 images without character or life. The awakening 
 intellect has realised figures and has realised build- 
 ings, but rivers and rocks, the common earth and 
 mountain peaks, it has not realised at all. In the 
 representation of these features certain formulas are 
 reiterated and acquiesced in with almost the apathy 
 of the old Byzantine days. The stratification of 
 rock, the outcrops of ledges, the ripples on water, 
 the shapes of clouds and many other natural objects 
 are indicated by conventions which are repeated 
 quite in the Oriental spirit for a century. Progress 
 in these regions remote from humanity was slow. 
 Even Leonardo never came to perceive that the 
 savage rocks possessed a character of their own 
 and structural laws of their own, which made them 
 worthy of being painted with all possible care and 
 
THE INTELLECTUAL MOVEMENT 
 thoughtfulness. He had never looked at rocks with 
 the eye of intellect, and he painted them accordingly 
 as if they had been made of cheese. 
 
 But if progress, in dealing with scenes of wild 
 nature, is slow, it is much more rapid in the render- 
 ing of domesticated or tame nature. The coloured 
 flower-heads that peeped from the grass at men's 
 feet, the trees, symmetrical and cultured, which 
 grew around their villas, or tempted them by their 
 promise of cool shade to ascend the gentle eminence 
 on which they stood, these were the artists' first 
 natural subjects ; and it is with these as with the 
 architecture — no sooner is attention once turned 
 upon them than they are rendered with a perfect 
 articulation of leaf and petal which testifies to the 
 new comprehension which has suddenly seized upon 
 them. But still the limit of intellectual realisation, 
 the point it has attained to but beyond which it 
 cannot yet penetrate, though pushed back a step, 
 remains clearly marked ; for while the surrounding 
 shrubs and flowers are wrought with a perfect deli- 
 cacy of discrimination, the hills and earth are pipe- 
 clay still, and the rocks mere shapeless dumplings. 
 The old suddenness of transition from knowledge 
 to ignorance remains. As a man standing in the 
 heart of a mist sees the vapour lift and recoil, 
 uncovering by degrees the nearer objects while still 
 obstructing the remote, so is it with the intellectual 
 range, and so with the artistic capacity of the Renais- 
 sance. Man ; man plus architecture and clothes ; 
 man plus architecture and clothes, plus a few flowers 
 and trees ; man plus architecture and clothes, plus 
 a few flowers and trees, plus an enlarging area 
 
 27s 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 
 gradually extending to things remote, but never 
 quite mastering the absolutely wild — these are the 
 degrees of enlightenment. From man as the centre 
 of all interest intellectual realisation proceeds, and 
 as it proceeds, working outwards, first one set of 
 objects and then another is comprehended, ren- 
 dered definable, and so brought within the grasp of 
 the artist. 
 
 Thus most Renaissance pictures— all of them 
 which comprise a sufficiently wide range of subject- 
 matter — are to some extent shared between know- 
 ledge and ignorance. How far knowledge has got, 
 to what extent it has penetrated the whole picture, 
 will, of course, depend chiefly on the period at 
 which the work was painted ; but until the move- 
 ment comes to an end and art begins to decline 
 into anarchy, there remain always moods of nature 
 not realised, not paintable ; and so in every work of 
 adequate range the limit of intellectual realisation 
 will be distinctly apparent. Once let this idea be 
 entertained and the reader will find, as he walks 
 through the rooms of the National Gallery, that his 
 eye will easily learn to distinguish the intellectual 
 range of most of the works. For example, in ** The 
 Nativity,* by Luca Signorelli, the figures, attitudes, 
 faces, expressions, movements, are all free and 
 expressive ; the little flowers and herbs and grasses 
 in the foreground are exquisitely realised and 
 reproduced ; the temple in the middle distance is 
 drawn with the most determined correctness, as 
 also are the battlements and towers of the town on 
 the hill ; but the crags and rocky declivities which 
 form the greater part of the composition are not in 
 276 
 
THE INTELLECTUAL MOVEMENT 
 
 the least like natural stones and cliffs, but are merely 
 the perpetuation of certain dull formulas accepted as 
 signifying the real things by artists whose comprehen- 
 sion had never grasped their actual appearances. 
 A still more conspicuous example of the same limita- 
 tion is Mantegna's ** Agony in the Garden" in which 
 the figures, near and distant, are drawn with easy 
 mastery ; in which, too, the white Jerusalem walls 
 and towers, and all the delicate architecture of the 
 city, are elaborated with exquisite accuracy, yet in 
 which the wild peaks and rocky landscape are 
 executed with a complete and childlike uncon- 
 sciousness of their real character. 
 
 Nor can it be maintained in explanation of such 
 limitations that the capacity of Renaissance art 
 progressed from the more easy to the more difficult. 
 On the contrary the reverse is rather the case. The 
 success achieved is in inverse proportion to the ease 
 in achieving it. Of all subjects the human form, 
 with its infinite variety of gesture and expression 
 dependent on minute inflections in drawing, is the 
 most difficult to master ; after figures, architecture, 
 with its complex perspective and the demand it 
 makes on exactitude of line, is the next most 
 difficult, while when we come to nature, the trees 
 and flowers of the foreground are certainly much 
 harder to render than the remoter features of the 
 landscape. Any student of water-colour painting 
 at the present day could draw a wild landscape with 
 a truth which no painter of the Renaissance could 
 have rivalled ; and it would be only as he approached 
 the more difficult features in composition that he 
 would find Renaissance art forging ahead of him. 
 
 277 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 
 The cause of success or failure, in the case of 
 Renaissance art, does not therefore lie in ease or 
 difficulty of execution. It is to be found rather in 
 the fact that as we make the transition from wild 
 nature to tame, from tame nature to man's handi- 
 work, and from man's handiwork to man, we are 
 moving from the outskirts of a circle of knowledge 
 towards the centre of it, which is man himself ; and 
 consequently, with every step we take, the appeal to 
 human interest increases in power and intensity. 
 This human interest it is, this power, as I have 
 called it, of intellectually realising the object 
 looked at, which is the clue to the progress made. 
 Let intellect catch hold, let it inform the eye with its 
 desire for penetrating, measuring, defining, and 
 whether the thing looked at be difficult or easy to 
 draw, the artist will soon learn to draw it. Let 
 intellect fail to catch hold, fail to direct the eye, and 
 though the object be comparatively easy to represent, 
 he will find himself helpless before it. 
 
 If once we conceive artistic activity as based on 
 intellectual, we have at once a visible register to the 
 whole intellectual development of the Renaissance. 
 We have, for example, the dominating position of 
 Florence defined with a new clearness. In the case 
 of several schools of art, analysed by Mr. Berenson 
 in his " Northern Painters," it is apparent that 
 the Florentine influence is always the fruitful and 
 progressive one, and that motives derived from 
 other sources always tend to sterility. This will 
 seem natural enough if we recognise that artistic 
 progress was made possible by intellectual progress, 
 for there is no question for a moment of Florence's 
 278 
 
THE INTELLECTUAL MOVEMENT 
 
 intellectual supremacy. What the Renaissance, as a 
 whole, did for art was to turn it into a vehicle for 
 the expression of intellectualised life, and it was 
 because Florence led the way in matters of intellect 
 that she led the way in matters of art. Side by side 
 at the rise of the new epoch stand the two great 
 Florentine figures of Dante and Giotto, like a pair 
 of mountain springs, from which the twin rivers of 
 literature and art flow down to the valleys and the 
 plain ; dealing, both of them, with the more momen- 
 tous issues of man's fate, and dealing with them 
 with that new, unmistakable and terrible force of 
 intellectual realisation of which they were the first 
 appointed instruments. Down from Dante stretches 
 a line of poets and prose writers whose study is still 
 man, but who develop by degrees a more and more 
 familiar and mundane intimacy with their subject ; 
 while down from Giotto stretch the Renaissance 
 painters, pursuing a like course, and handling by 
 degrees more familiarly all the circumstances of 
 human life. The literary impulse thus given is to 
 end in the minute realisation of the modern novel. 
 The artistic impulse thus given is to end in the 
 correspondingly minute realisation of modern 
 painting. But the two, at every stage of their 
 development, are allied, for they both alike result 
 from the intellect's widening survey or closer 
 scrutiny. 
 
 But although, this being the case, we might, as 
 Indeed we generally do, approach the Renaissance 
 from the literary point of view, and perhaps from 
 several other points of view besides, yet I cannot 
 help doubting whether any of these methods of 
 
 279 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 study, or all combined, would give us the same vivid 
 perception of the course followed by the movement 
 as is to be gained from painting. Does one reader 
 in fifty realise the meaning of that dull phrase of 
 ours, "the awakening of the intellect," which we 
 have repeated till it has become a mere formula ? 
 Does one reader in fifty realise it as an active process, 
 with tangible results and methods, and a regular 
 scheme of development of its own ? I venture to 
 doubt if any historical, political, or literary study of 
 the subject could endow it with such a living 
 interest. But consider it in relation to the view of 
 painting that has been suggested. Watch the 
 operation of the new faculty touching into life, like 
 a magic wand, the figures and countenances of men 
 and women ; thence moving on to things most 
 soaked with human interest, and so by degrees to 
 others more removed. Watch the mental activity 
 thus rendered visible, creeping and spreading from 
 stage to 'stage, giving realism to each thing as it 
 reaches and grasps it. Does not such a manifestation 
 of its activity, thus laid on the canvas before our 
 eyes, quicken our old phrase with a new meaning 
 and enable us to realise the intellectual awakening as 
 a vital process ? 
 
 We may also, I think, arrive at something of 
 interest if we go on to consider our own case and 
 the depth of the difference between Renaissance art 
 and ours. The old limitations no longer in these 
 days exist. So completely has the modern mind 
 become intellectualised, and so completely has it 
 intellectualised the eye, that the modern artist can 
 paint anything. Not wild nature only, throwing it 
 280 
 
THE INTELLECTUAL MOVEMENT 
 
 all; just as it is, upon the canvas, and not all the 
 daily incidents and moments of human life only, 
 fugitive glimpses seen one minute and gone the 
 next, yet caught with the extraordinarily swift 
 intellectual perception of modern sight — not these 
 things only can the artist of to-day paint, but 
 atmospheric effects of shadows, and reflections, and 
 mists ; of sunbeams in the air and upon the leaves 
 and grass— effects so aerial and evanescent that they 
 seem scarcely palpable to sight itself. The change 
 would seem all in favour of ourselves. Instead of 
 being able to deal only with a very limited range of 
 subjects, modern art can deal with, can realise, the 
 universe. Its sphere of interest and its sphere of 
 capacity are alike indefinitely enlarged, and in this 
 sense the task which Renaissance art set out to 
 accomplish, the task of converting'painting into an 
 adequate vehicle for the expression of intellectualised 
 life, may be said to have been achieved. But there 
 is something to set against this. - Our facility in 
 representation, our miscellaneous and universal 
 range of interest, threaten us with pitfalls from which 
 Renaissance art was exempt. The man who can 
 draw but little, and that little all from the same point 
 of view, cannot widely err. The man who can draw 
 anything from any point of view is liable to infinite 
 error. There might be no great occasion to preach 
 the need of selection and the evils of redundancy to 
 an artist who could paint anly a bunch of cyclamen, 
 a praying saint, and an acacia-tree, but how widely 
 different does the case become when we have to do 
 with artists who can paint rocks and dew, and the 
 tangle of woods and street crowds, and 'buses and 
 
 28l 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 
 hansomS; and all the motley panorama and topsy- 
 turveydom of natural and human life all over the 
 world. 
 
 This is the difference that puts modern criticism 
 on a new footing. Instinctively we look to the 
 Renaissance, the great creative epoch in painting of 
 Christian times, for instruction and guidance in the 
 art. We do so because we feel that the coherence, 
 significance and simplicity of that art are the 
 essential qualifications for all effective art, that all 
 art is effective only in so far as it possesses these 
 qualities, and that our own art must somehow or 
 other attain to them if it is ever to express anything 
 at all with clearness and power. Doubtless we are 
 right. The qualities of Renaissance art are the 
 qualities of great art in all ages, and we cannot too 
 clearly recognise it. But also we cannot too clearly 
 understand that it is impossible for us to attain to 
 these qualities by the road by which the Italians 
 attained to them. We have lost the old human 
 centralisation and the strict limitations in executive 
 range of Renaissance art which were such safe- 
 guards, which forced coherence, significance and 
 simplicity on their generation, so that that generation 
 could do without a thoughtful and sound critical 
 theory of art. Those safeguards and restraints have 
 vanished. Nothing any longer forces coherence, 
 significance and simplicity upon us, and therefore 
 we cannot do without a thoughtful and sound 
 critical theory of art. We who know enough to go 
 wrong, must know enough to go right. If the 
 reader would realise how grave a peril facility of 
 execution, unguided and unrestrained, may become, 
 282 
 
THE INTELLECTUAL MOVEMENT 
 
 he has but to glance around at the anarchy and 
 confusion which have everywhere invaded the 
 domain of art. Never were energy and activity in 
 that domain so universal as at present, yet never 
 was the direction which all this energy and activity 
 should take more obscure. One knows not whether 
 to marvel most at the volume of the yearly output 
 which this energy is responsible for, or at the 
 number of spasmodic and contradictory impulses m 
 which it fritters itself away. Looking down once 
 on the great cataract south of Wady Haifa, which 
 the Arabs call the " Belly of Stone,'' I saw below me 
 a vast expanse of scattered boulders among which 
 the water gushed and foamed, spouting in a thousand 
 petty channels, sometimes in this direction, some- 
 times in that, so that in the chaos and din it was 
 difficult to distinguish any forward movement at 
 all. Never was the progress of water in less propor- 
 tion to its energy. Voluble yet incoherent, eager yet 
 aimless, of such a kind is the activity which possesses 
 modern art. No one will deny what all lament. 
 The speculation at the back of every mind is, how 
 are we to regain the coherence and simplicity we 
 have lost, how are we to curb and control this 
 terrible dexterity which takes the impress of every 
 random whim with such fatal facility ? 
 
 Will the art of criticism prove equal to such a 
 task ? Intellect, with its realisation of the actual 
 appearance and structure of things, has given us the 
 dexterity : will intellect, pressed further and reveal- 
 ing inward principles of coherence and order, teach 
 us how to curb and control it ? I do not mean to 
 suggest that criticism can ever stand us in the stead 
 
 283 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 
 of creative genius, still less that it can be a substi- 
 tute for those profound impulses of emotion and 
 faith which unite whole populations in a common 
 endeavour and are the main instruments in the 
 evolution of artistic epochs. Criticism will never 
 of itself generate a great creative epoch. It may, 
 however, prepare the way for such an epoch, and it 
 may greatly enhance its value when it comes. And 
 in the meantime, while we are still in the experi- 
 mental stage, it may instil the beginnings of a 
 purpose and a concerted aim into the experiments 
 of the hour by formulating a body of authoritative 
 ideas which may serve as a check on the too facile 
 indulgence in personal vagaries, and suggest to all 
 earnest people the existence of certain assured clues 
 amid the labyrinth of alternatives around them. 
 
 This seems the task cut out for modern art criticism. 
 The new circumstances under which art is now 
 carried on are forcing every year more peremptorily 
 this duty upon it. To share the enthusiasms of the 
 moment, to follow instead of guiding public opinion, 
 is an easy critical method and one sure of reward, 
 for he will not have to wait long for recognition 
 who supplies us with reasons for liking what we like 
 already. But it is not by such means that criticism 
 will justify its claim to be considered a serious 
 intellectual vocation. That claim it can justify only 
 by shouldering the new responsibility cast upon it 
 and setting itself to build up a code of laws which 
 shall answer the purpose of the old executive limita- 
 tions in controlling and concentrating the creative 
 faculty. 
 
 284 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 THE ART OF AN ARISTOCRACY 
 
 The question of style : Style in French furniture : What con- 
 stitutes it : The luxury of this furniture its sole reason for 
 existence : French society in the age of Louis XV. : Luxury 
 and frivolity the governing motives of its every action : 
 Aspect of France and of French policy in that age ; French 
 colonisation in the East and West : French campaigns : De- 
 cUne of the military spirit : The reign of corruption • Diderot 
 and the Encyclopaedists : The seriousness of the Court eti- 
 quette : Total severance of French aristocratic life from all 
 real practical considerations : Its approaching doom and the 
 terror that hangs over it : The visible manifestation of these 
 ideas embodied in its characteristic art 
 
 PROBABLY every one is secretly impressed by the 
 prestige and significance of style, and, in some dim 
 way, is made conscious of the fact that style pos- 
 sesses a meaning and is fraught with an intelligible 
 message. The uniformity and unanimity of great 
 buildings is proof of the existence of such a mean- 
 ing. Coherence of structure stands for coherence 
 of thought. Where not a detail, or smallest feature 
 which in any way conflicts with the general character, 
 is admitted, we cannot but be aware of an intelligent 
 principle at work, selecting and rejecting. We 
 observe also that this principle is independent of 
 and stronger than individual will, since the more 
 it comes into play the more the initiative of the 
 individual is superseded and his action absorbed. 
 
 285 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 From this absorption of the individual there results 
 that uniformity of the great styles which, we feel, 
 can embody no petty whim or chance current of 
 floating fashion, but a powerful, deep-seated con- 
 viction of the age. The typical buildings that 
 stretch back in long array into the past, Doric 
 temple and Roman palace, and early Christian 
 basilica and Arab mosque and soaring Gothic 
 minster, seem each to incarnate this spirit of their 
 own time. So different, yet each instinct with 
 definite character, they invite us, like sphinx riddles, 
 to guess their meaning. And we are never tired of 
 guessing. Each generation in turn addresses itself 
 to the task, and ponders over the message which 
 it feels must inhabit forms so harmonious and 
 coherent. 
 
 Such is the attraction of style. But it is not 
 confined to styles of architecture. No sooner, even 
 in comparatively trivial subjects, do we come in 
 touch with that peculiar uniformity and ordered 
 motion which marks the presence of style than we 
 are conscious of the same sense of definite character 
 and meaning. Styles of furniture have this definite 
 character as well as styles of building. Louis Quinze 
 furniture is as uniform as Gothic architecture. 
 There is, however, this difference, that the purpose 
 and meaning of style in furniture is slighter and 
 more on the surface than the meaning of style in 
 architecture, and for this very reason is perhaps 
 easier to seize. The meaning of Gothic lies deep in 
 the heart of its age. It is the voice of national con- 
 viction, inexhaustible in interest but difficult com- 
 pletely +0 grasp and formulate. The meaning of 
 286 
 
THE ART OF AN ARISTOCRACY 
 styles in furniture referS; as a rule, to the society of 
 the period, and deals not so much with national 
 conviction as with the manners and life of a class. 
 
 In attempting the following interpretation of 
 French art I have at least this advantage, that 1 am 
 dealing with a subject familiar to every one. French 
 eighteenth-century furniture has been so long a 
 fashion that most people's houses contain specimens 
 of it. Moreover, besides these scattered examples, 
 we have our great collections : we have the Wallace 
 Collection giving us the full blaze and Hfe of the 
 ancient regime j and the Jones Collection giving us 
 that exquisite grace and refinement which to the end 
 kept the sight of horrible reality from the vision of 
 poor Marie Antoinette. These are museums, not of 
 the furniture only, but of the painting and whole 
 system of decoration of their period. It is scarcely 
 necessary to point out the great value of such 
 collections as these, when it comes to the interpreta- 
 tion of the meaning of a style. It is, as I said, in its 
 unanimity, in its development of the same theme and 
 the same set of ideas in many different ways, that 
 the significance of style is felt. All that we set eyes 
 on, not the furniture only but the ornaments and 
 bric-a-brac and pictures on the wall, must combine 
 to convey the same impression, if that impression is 
 to be adequately appreciated and rightly understood. 
 It is this unanimity in variety, the consciousness of 
 being surrounded by ideas of the same character, 
 but reproduced in countless different ways, which 
 fills the suites of rooms at Hertford House with the 
 very atmosphere and life of the French eighteenth- 
 centurv aristocracy. True, what we have here is no 
 
 287 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 
 deep and solemn conviction, such as inspires those 
 great manifestations of style in which the spirit of an 
 age is embodied. It is only the spirit of a section 
 of society which pervades these salons ; a section, 
 too, confessedly frivolous and pleasure-loving and 
 altogether lacking in seriousness and depth of 
 interest. And yet, the delightful complacency with 
 which the philosophy of this particular class is 
 voiced for us by the glittering harmony through 
 which we move, makes it impossible not to wish to 
 transcribe the message. French furniture has often 
 been praised for its beauty, its preciousness, its fine 
 workmanship ; but how seldom do we hear it praised 
 for its historical significance I How seldom do we 
 value it for what it tells us, not of the manners and 
 tastes only, but of the ideas and limitations and view 
 of life of this dominant section of the French nation ! 
 Let us remember, too, what there is of peculiar and 
 fatal significance about a section of society in whose 
 doom the spirit of opera boiiffe and tragedy, un- 
 paralleled frivolity and unparalleled ferocity, are so 
 horribly mingled and involved. The airs and graces, 
 the solemn antics and elaborate etiquette, of the 
 French noblesse, relieved against the inky back- 
 ground of the Revolution, are inspired with a half- 
 serious, wholly pathetic interest which, in themselves, 
 they might not possess. Moriiiiri te salntant. This 
 debonnaire philosophy, so lightly echoed by the 
 splendour of these rooms, is the philosophy which 
 was controverted by the guillotine. 
 
 How shall we seize it ? Let us choose the most 
 obvious characteristic here present and question 
 that ; it is sure to be the most significant one. Nor 
 288 
 
THE ART OF AN ARISTOCRACY 
 as to this most obvious characteristic, is there much 
 room for doubt. The richness of material, the 
 elaborate and infinitely painstaking workmanship 
 of each object we turn to, suggest at once a 
 consummate luxury and the manners and life of 
 an essentially luxurious class. It is a furniture 
 dc litxe, if ever there was one. The gorgeousness 
 and glitter of it, the loaded gilding of the chairs 
 and couches, the inlays of precious woods and 
 metals, the carved ormolu and painted porcelain, 
 the ornaments of gold and silver and enamel, 
 studded with gems, or wrought out of lapis lazuli, 
 or rock crystal or other rare and precious stone, all 
 bear out this character. The more we look, the 
 more this impression is confirmed. Luxury here is 
 dominant, is the master motive. It dominates, for 
 one thing, the labour that serves it. There is never 
 any mistaking for a m.jment the kind of excellence 
 in workmanship which springs from the free use of 
 a natural gift, and which belongs to all expert crafts- 
 manship. It has a flexibility, what musicians call 
 a sense of touch, which stamps it at once. The 
 excellence here displayed is not of that kind. It is 
 a forced excellence ; an excellence not exerting 
 itself freely, but constrained, whether it will or no, 
 to celebrate the supremacy of luxury. Rarely, save 
 among Orientals, do we find the toil of the work- 
 man lavished in a spirit so patiently servile. 
 
 This luxury, then, so universal and so dominant, 
 is the obvious characteristic which we are to question 
 more closely. There is a great deal of luxurious 
 furniture made in all epochs, and perhaps, at the 
 first glance, it might puzzle us to say what is the 
 
 T 289 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 
 difference between this universal, luxurious furniture 
 scattered through the ages, and the luxurious furni- 
 ture of Hertford House. There is, however, if we 
 consider the matter, this difference : that with 
 luxurious furniture in general the luxury is an 
 attribute dependent on the use of the thing. It 
 is an adornment and decoration of something real, 
 an accessory or afterthought, which, though often 
 carried far, still keeps its decorative purpose and 
 does not thrust itself forward as the aim and object 
 for which the thing was made. 
 
 The peculiarity, on the contrary, of the Hertford 
 House luxury is that it is an exposition and analysis 
 of the quality of luxury as a governing motive. 
 Ostentation and show are not here accessory to use 
 and comfort. They are the primary conditions. If 
 we question any bit of this furniture we shall find 
 this divorce from reality admitted, and this purpose 
 of display confessed. The primary use of chairs 
 and sofas is, after all, to sit or he upon, and in most 
 luxurious furniture this use is fully admitted, and 
 the luxury consists in elaborating and perfecting 
 the use, and by adding the easiest springs and 
 softest cushions, making the chair or sofa still more 
 lie-able or sit-able on. But the Hertford House 
 chairs and sofas are made for no such purpose. The 
 adornment lavished on them, far from emphasising 
 their natural use, has actually annulled that use, so 
 that they are now far less lie-able or sit-able on than 
 any cottage bench or stool of common wood. Sight- 
 seeing is tiring work, but we do not imagine that any 
 visitor, however tired, has ever felt the temptation 
 to sit and rest on one of these stiff and gilded seats, 
 290 
 
THE ART OF AN ARISTOCRACY 
 The reader is familiar, probably, with an archi- 
 tectural theory which asserts that ornament must 
 conform to structural use. This theory, which 
 applies to a good deal besides architecture, seems 
 to be, in the case of French eighteenth-century 
 craftsmanship, reversed. None of it suggests use 
 at all. We have said that the chairs and sofas do 
 not invite us to sit on them. But neither do the 
 glittering inlaid tables with their golden legs offer 
 to supply the ordinary use of tables. How could 
 we ventuie to hide such splendour under a litter of 
 newspapers and novels ? In the same way the 
 escritoires are not made to be written at, and the cabi- 
 nets are not made for putting things away in. Nothing, 
 in short, that we look at, makes it any longer its 
 object and purpose in life to fulfil those functions 
 for which originally, as a species, it was called into 
 existence. Everything has passed beyond that stage, 
 and, by common consent, has substituted a decora- 
 tive for a useful purpose. Functional use has re- 
 tired into the background. Show and display have 
 asserted themselves as the raison d'etre and serious 
 business of life. With immense pains and patient 
 care, each article and object, in all these gorgeous 
 suites of apartments, sets out to be primarily an 
 ornament ; divests itself of reality, puts away the 
 practical purposes of life and gives itself up to an 
 exclusively decorative treatment. 
 
 This is, as it seems to me, the note of the style 
 before us. If, as we stroll from room to room, we 
 take with us the formula '* a decorative rather than 
 a useful purpose" and apply it to each object in 
 turn, we shall find that each will bow to the justice 
 
 291 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 of the definition. Style, as we said, marks the 
 presence of a definite meaning or message, and here 
 we have the meaning of these French styles ; a 
 meaning scarcely to be questioned by any one who, 
 in such a place as Hertford House, submits himself 
 to the cumulative influence of his surroundings. 
 Let us, that we may the better realise it, note its 
 moment of origin. Louis Quatorze furniture, like 
 Louis Quinze, is luxurious and splendid, with its 
 brocades and tapestries and rich BouUe inlays. But 
 it is splendid in a stately, dignified fashion. It 
 harmonises well with the ordered long arcades and 
 the great ceremonious suites of salons of the archi- 
 tecture of the period. Moreover, when we come to 
 consider it, it has by no means yet lost touch with 
 the uses and realities of life. A study of the furni- 
 ture collection in the South Kensington galleries will 
 show that, as regards shape and form, a good deal 
 of the simplicity and massiveness of the old Gothic 
 furniture survives even to the eighteenth century. 
 Through the Renaissance period this massiveness is 
 retained, though the tendency to redundancy of 
 carving is apparent. Down to the latter half of the 
 sixteenth century the sculpture is for the most 
 part out of the solid wood, and the pieces, in 
 material and shape, are simple and strong in con- 
 struction, though treated pompously. Later we 
 come to inlaid marquetries, but still the substantial 
 forms survive. The decoration, however overdone, 
 does not usurp the place of function and become 
 the ruling purpose. And this is the case even during 
 the gorgeous Louis Quatorze period. M. Havard 
 selects the word "majestic" as descriptive of the 
 292 
 
THE ART OF AN ARISTOCRACY 
 
 art as well as the life of that period, or at least of the 
 first half of it, and, admitting a trifle of vulgarity in 
 the majesty, it is a well-applied epithet. The fact is 
 Louis Quatorze splendour still cloaks something 
 real. Affairs of state still count for something. 
 The pride and power of the nation are still important 
 considerations. Louis never allows any one to 
 forget that he is a great king. This sense of dignity 
 and stateliness runs all through the splendour of 
 this reign, as it runs all through its life and politics, 
 and makes one constantly aware that it is a splendour 
 compatible with a certain large effectiveness of 
 character and aim. 
 
 With the passing of the grand monarque, how- 
 ever, this majesty passes too. "Avec le dernier 
 soupir du plus majestueux des rois, la majeste, deja, 
 quelque peu meconnue, acheve de s'envoler de la 
 terre." A new spirit that knew nothing of the duties 
 and responsibilities of life takes its place. *' En 
 quelques instants tout change; le vieux decor 
 s'effondre et sur ses mines un monde nouveau, 
 frais, pimpant, gracieux, l^ger, indiscret et joyeux, 
 s'etablit et s'installe." Seriousness in life and art 
 goes out with Louis Quatorze ; frivolity comes into 
 life and art with Louis Quinze. The old strength 
 and stateliness give place to an artificial and excessive 
 refinement in workmanship, not of detail only but 
 of form. What was ornament in the older style 
 assumes control, eats form away, until form itself 
 becomes ornament. It is the peculiarity of the 
 studies of curves and scroll work of Louis Quinze 
 furniture, and the slender, attenuated proportions 
 of Louis Seize, that they no longer represent the 
 
 293 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 beautifying and perfecting of the common things of 
 Hfe, which after all is the true function of art as 
 applied to things like furniture, but minister and 
 bear witness^ to a life cut off from such things. It is 
 impossible, as I have said, to associate these exquisite 
 creations with the idea of everyday life and common 
 use at all. They have forgotten all about use and 
 reality, and have made of mere luxury their raison 
 d'etu and supreme justification. The artificial has 
 to them become the real. 
 
 To this we return as the keynote of these later 
 styles, and it is in this that they portray so effectively 
 the life of the class and period to which they belong. 
 For it is not mere luxury which is found in the 
 French court of the eighteenth century. Luxury 
 has generally been a habitant of courts. It is the 
 fact that luxury has assumed control of life, that it 
 has eaten into society's core, eaten realities and 
 duties quite away, and become itself the only serious 
 preoccupation of life, which stamps it, in the French 
 society of the time, with such peculiar significance. 
 The remarkable thing about this French society is 
 that it is incapable of any useful function whatever. 
 The courtiers and nobles of Louis XV.'s reign seem 
 to have lost all power of taking an interest in 
 anything save court scandals and intrigues. Those 
 among them whose memory goes back to the 
 manners of an earlier age, an age not destitute of 
 courage, dignity and fortitude, deplore the falling 
 off in virile virtue. They can scarcely credit the 
 change which has taken place under their very eyes. 
 There is no principle, not honour itself even, which 
 has not succumbed to the corroding affects of 
 
 m 
 
THE ART OF AN ARISTOCRACY 
 frivolity. The nation is visibly drifting to destruc- 
 tion, the signs of an approaching catastrophe grow 
 daily more threatening, yet society jests and titters 
 on, incapable of realising anything save its own 
 dissipations and its own elaborate etiquette. 
 
 Let us examine this a little more closely. Let us 
 take the formula we applied to the furniture — a 
 decorative rather than a useful purpose — and see 
 how it answers as applied to society. And in apply- 
 ing this formula to society let us note this : That it 
 is not the dissipation and luxury themselves which 
 are significant, but the fact that the dissipation and 
 luxury have usurped the place of reality and become 
 the one serious business of life. The significant 
 symptoms, accordingly, will be those which show us 
 this reality passing out of the serious and important 
 things of life. Such facts as that the Prince de 
 Conti used the dust of a crushed diamond to dry 
 the ink of a billet to his mistress, or that the Queen 
 gave the Dauphin a carriage covered with rubies 
 and sapphires, or that Madame de Matignon paid 
 24,000 livres a year to have her hair brushed, or 
 that the Comte d'Artois pulled down and rebuilt a 
 castle to prepare a f^te for the Queen, or that young 
 de Chenonceaux lost 700,000 livres in one night's 
 gambling, or that another courtier kept forty horses 
 for an occasional ride in the Bois de Boulogne, and 
 another bought up and emptied the streets leading 
 to his residence that his amours might be conducted 
 in secret, or that Madame du Barry's bills during 
 the time she was in favour amounted to some four 
 million livres ; such facts as these — and they might 
 be multiplied to fill volumes — are not, after all, the 
 
 29s 
 
THE WORKS OP MAN 
 
 kind of facts that best serve to show the character 
 of the luxury of the age. They can be matched, 
 more or less closely, in the histories of most aristo- 
 cracies in most ages. The facts which are significant 
 are those which testify to the insensibility of this 
 pleasure-loving class to natural instincts and primitive 
 duties and responsibilities ; which testify, that is to 
 say, to the ebbing of reality out of the serious things 
 of life. When, for instance, a Comte de Tilly records 
 that he was brought up by valets, or a Due de 
 Biron, observing that a lackey had the superinten- 
 dence of his education, remarks, "J'etais d'ailleurs 
 comme tous les enfans de mon age et de ma sorte, 
 les plus jolis habits pour sortir, nu et mourant de 
 faim a la maison," then we begin to realise what 
 was being deducted from the serious things of life 
 to pay for the frivolities. It is curious to notice 
 that the value of children in this society was 
 essentially a decorative one. To be trained in the 
 etiquette of their elders, to be dressed in the mode, 
 tlie little boys in ruffles and swords, the little girls 
 in rouge and patches with false hair piled on their 
 heads, and have their precocious gallantry and savoir- 
 faire paraded to the laughter and applause of society, 
 were the uses they were put to. Their infantine 
 compliments and bons mots are recited with en- 
 thusiasm, and they are allowed to constitute a 
 charming addition to the lapdog and the negro 
 page of their mother's suite. 
 
 In the same way, when, in turning over the 
 memoirs of the day, we find ourselves arrested by 
 phrase after phrase and episode after episode which 
 record how entirely the whole meaning of marriage 
 2<j6 
 
THE ART OF AN ARISTOCRACY 
 
 and married life has been swamped in a sea of 
 intrigues and petty liaisons, the same sense of the 
 sapping of the serious things of life is brought 
 home to us. One almost hesitates to intrude moral 
 considerations into the presence of anything so irre- 
 sponsibly gay as the society of the French court, 
 for indeed there is something disarming and next 
 door to innocent in the excesses of people who are 
 quite unaffectedly and honestly blind to the serious 
 side of things. At the same time, nothing can alter 
 the fact that fathers and mothers and children and 
 husbands and wives are among life's chief realities, 
 and, by a normally healthy society, must be so 
 treated. The truth, of course, is that where great 
 store is set on trifling things and the pursuit of 
 them followed up with intense seriousness, this 
 seriousness has to be paid for in the loss of a 
 corresponding amount of interest in what is real 
 and important. It is this loss of interest in what is 
 real and important which is the really deadly 
 symptom of the French court life of the period. 
 The supreme importance attached to gaiety and 
 dissipation and show has so sucked the strength out 
 of all real and important functions that at last the 
 sense for reality has become a lost sense. Children 
 are not realities ; wives and husbands are not reali- 
 ties ; victories and defeats, as we shall see in a 
 minute, and shame and dishonour are not realities. 
 Nothing can exist, nothing can occur, but it is 
 turned immediately into food for jests. The defeat 
 of Hochstadt is deplored because the skit on it lacks 
 humour. Rosbach is approved because its verses 
 are excellent. Necker's attempts as Minister of 
 
 ^^1 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 Finance to stave off national bankruptcy count for 
 nothing. His fitness for his office is proved by a 
 particularly splendid banquet given to the fashion- 
 able world of Paris. Every event however tragic, 
 every crisis however grave, is dealt with as comedy. 
 In proportion as the unreal has become real, the 
 real has become unreal. 
 
 But this instinct for unreality, which we come to 
 recognise in the court party as quite unfailing, 
 reveals itself in much more important than merely 
 social matters. It reveals itself with just as much 
 infallibility in matters of state policy and national 
 government. It is important to remember in this 
 connection that French society and the French 
 Government were, in spirit, one. Richelieu's policy, 
 bequeathed by him to Louis Quatorze, of wrecking 
 feudalism once and for all by depriving the great 
 territorial nobles of their civil duties and responsi- 
 bilities, was fated to have as grave an effect on the 
 King's authority as on that of the nobles them- 
 selves. Shorn of all useful purpose, their authority 
 and functions in their own departments usurped 
 by crown officials, the aristocrats left their huge 
 chateaux and estates and gravitated to Versailles. 
 If they could not be useful let them be ornamental. 
 It had been decreed that the State should be nothing 
 to them, they proceeded to make society everything. 
 Hence was developed that purely decorative purpose 
 which became the distinguishing note of this French 
 society. But that purpose did not stop at society. 
 It proceeded to corrupt the governing principle 
 itself. Imbedded, so to speak, in the heart of this 
 society, breathing its air, living its life, receiving its 
 298 
 
THE ART OF AN ARISTOCRACY 
 
 influence, cut off by it from the outer world, the 
 monarchy became rapidly infected with its spirit. 
 It had created a frivolous class and itself caught the 
 disease. The Government which ensued, a Govern- 
 ment of mistresses and favourites of mistresses, was 
 animated purely by the prevailing social frivolity. 
 Henceforth monarchy and aristocracy advance to 
 their doom hand in hand. 
 
 We shall not be wandering from our subject if, 
 without plunging too deeply into history, we dwell 
 just long enough on one or two stages of this 
 progress to bring out the special characteristic we 
 have in view. Several of the chief factors which 
 were leading up to the Revolution had their origin 
 in the middle years of the eighteenth century, and 
 of these the two chief, perhaps, were the war of the 
 Austrian Alliance and the philosophic movement in 
 literature. It is interesting to observe how thoroughly 
 in their own manner was the handling by the Court 
 party of these significant events. 
 
 During these middle years of the eighteenth 
 century two distinct and opposed lines of policy 
 were offered to France to choose between. One 
 was a policy of concentration ; an internal, exclu- 
 sively European policy, leading to no national 
 development and addressing itself merely to the 
 adjustment of European rivalries. The other was 
 a policy of expansion, consisting in the recognition 
 of the larger opportunities which the newly realised 
 East and West were beginning to unfold to human 
 enterprise. In this latter policy lay, of course, 
 France's true line of progress. Her position, both 
 in India and America, was strong. In America she 
 
 299 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 laid claim to the whole basin of the St. Lawrence 
 and the Mississippi, and was prepared to back 
 her claims. In 1754 Washington's expedition was 
 forced to capitulate, and in the following year 
 Braddock's much more important force was practi- 
 cally annihilated. The English Company of the 
 Ohio was quashed, and English attempts at expan- 
 sion everywhere checked and foiledc French forts 
 and blockhouses rose on every eminence and 
 commanded every valley. It was France's avowed 
 object to drive the English east of the Alleghany 
 Mountains, and she was in a fair way by 1755 to 
 accomplish it. Similarly, in India the boldness of 
 Dupleix's schemes of French conquest and dominion 
 seemed justified by circumstances. In the rivalry 
 between French Pondich^ry and British Madras 
 the French settlement had the best of it. Madras 
 fell in 1746. In 1748 the combined land and sea 
 expeditions under Major Lawrence and Admiral 
 Boscawen against Pondich^ry were repulsed. It 
 is noticeable that in these colonial wars the French 
 leaders were usually men of remarkable energy and 
 dash, prompt to act and ready to accept full responsi- 
 bility for their actions. Such were La Gallisoniere, 
 Du Quesne and La Corne in America, and Dupleix, 
 La Bourdonnais and Lally in India. They were 
 well supported, and the vigour with which France's 
 interests were served in these enterprises is in strong 
 contrast to the nerveless and feeble character of her 
 operations in Europe. The truth is that it was in 
 the opportunities for national expansion promised 
 by India that the hopes of French development lay, 
 and so long as she showed a disposition to avail 
 300 
 
THE ART OF AN ARISTOCRACY 
 herself of these opportunities France drew to her 
 service all the keenest and most adventurous spirits 
 among her children. Instinctively these felt the 
 inspiration of a truly national enterprise, and their 
 activity and vigorous tactics bear witness to the 
 stimulus which arises from co-operating with the 
 spirit of the age. 
 
 Their designs, however, as we know, came to 
 nothing. In a few years' time French hopes of ex- 
 pansion both in America and India were blighted. 
 Not for a century was France to resume, under 
 healthier auspices, the scheme of national develop- 
 ment which Du Quesne and Dupleix had fore- 
 shadowed. What flung her back was the Austrian 
 Alliance. Of the two policies she chose the retro- 
 grade one. In bucklering the cause of Austria 
 against the progressive races of the North, France 
 associated herself with a set of worn-out, aristocratic 
 and feudal traditions which were sinking into 
 decrepitude. She championed the ideas that were 
 going out against the ideas that were coming in. 
 The circumstances attending the treaty and the 
 conduct of the war that followed were all of a piece. 
 La Pompadour, as the reader knows, was the guiding 
 spirit throughout. It is not every day that an angry 
 woman can make the armed strength of a nation 
 the instrument of her jealousies and caprices, but 
 La Pompadour enjoyed that luxury. Frederick 
 never troubled to conceal his opinion of her, and 
 his contemptuous "Je ne la connais pas," when 
 Voltaire presented him her compliments, was in 
 stinging contrast to Maria Theresa's adroit flattery. 
 Old Kaunitz, past master in the diplomacy of courts, 
 
 30T 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 easily perceived the possibilities of the situation, 
 and, while the Empress plied the mistress with com- 
 pliments, made it the object of his manoeuvres to 
 secure the latter's good offices on behalf of Austria. 
 That done, all was done. La Pompadour was 
 France's mistress as much as Louis's. Louis 
 reigned and his mistress governed, was the saying. 
 The crisis, though the fate of nations hang on it, is 
 purely farcical in motive and idea. La Pompadour, 
 snubbed or noticed by the legitimate sovereigns of 
 Europe, suggests to our fancy a Becky Sharp, 
 railing at the Countess of Bareacres, or fawning on 
 the Marquis of Steyne. It was for causes such as 
 these that the greatest colonising chances ever laid 
 before a nation were neglected and thrown away. 
 
 Needless to say the whole Court party threw 
 itself into the Pompadour quarrel with immense 
 enthusiasm. If there was a nation, or society rather, 
 which the French nobility could sympathise with 
 it was to be found in Vienna. If there was a nation 
 repellent to them above all others it was practical- 
 minded, unpolished Prussia. Frederick himself 
 might stand for all they most despised and least 
 understood in human nature. They armed for the 
 campaign with delight and an inconceivable frivolity. 
 It was a new distraction. With the fatuity which 
 attended them whenever they came in contact with 
 realities they conceived that their march through 
 Germany would be a species of grand boar hunt. 
 Encumbered with baggage-trains of fine clothes, 
 perfumes and rare wines they advanced as far as 
 Rosbach, where Frederick's rough troopers, in the 
 space of a single hour, scattered them to the four 
 302 
 
THE ART OF AN ARISTOCRACY 
 
 winds. Between Bernis, La Pompadour's Minister 
 in Paris, and the generals in the field there ensues 
 a correspondence which curiously brings out for us 
 the spirit in which France was conducting this 
 enterprise. Soubise, chosen to command, as we 
 are carefully told, for no military qualifications, but 
 for his ingratiating manners and popularity at Court, 
 veils the disgrace of a rout he seems scarcely to 
 comprehend under a tissue of euphuisms, excuses 
 and compliments. The more experienced Saint- 
 Germain writes bluntly that he had under him a 
 band of thieves and assassins who were as ready to 
 mutiny in camp as they were to run away in the 
 field. *' Never was anything like it ; never was 
 there such a rotten army. The King has about the 
 worst infantry under the sun and the most un- 
 disciplined. How can we fight with such troops ? 
 The country was covered with our runaway men 
 for forty miles round." He adds savagely, what 
 was indeed the thought of many, " Our nation has 
 no longer any military spirit, and the sentiment of 
 honour is dead in us." The veteran Belleisle writes 
 in similar terms. Never would he have believed 
 that those Imperial troops, whose traditions and 
 actions had been so splendid, could lose thus 
 suddenly their glorious reputation and become the 
 scorn of Europe, t " We were not ready," wails 
 poor Bernis in reply ; " we had to begin without 
 proper preparation ; on s'est embarque temeraire- 
 ment." The army has no food, and no shoes, half 
 of it is without clothes and the cavalry lack boots. 
 Saint-Germain cuts in with a few trenchant home 
 truths about the men and officers. The army indeed 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 appears to be a very faithful image of the nation at 
 large. '*The misery of the soldiers would make 
 your heart bleed. They live abject and despised, 
 like chained dogs kept for fighting." The officers 
 meanwhile entirely neglect their military duties and 
 devote all their energies to plundering the country 
 through which they pass. 
 
 As the campaign progresses the rage and wonder 
 of those conducting or watching it increase. V Mon 
 Dieu, que notre nation est aplatie ! et qu'on fait peu 
 d'attention a la decadence du courage et de I'honneur 
 en France ! " ** Dans cent regiments on ne trou verait 
 pas six bons lieutenants-colonels. Nous ne savons 
 plus faire la guerre. Nulle nation n'est moins 
 militaire que la notre . . o Nos officiers ne valent 
 rien, ils sont indignes de servir. Tous soupirent 
 apres le repos, I'oisivete et I'argent/' The Versailles 
 system of promotion is naturally the subject of s jme 
 criticism. " Our best officers, recognising that there 
 is no chance of promotion for them since they 
 are not under Court protection, can ill endure to 
 be commanded by a lot of boobies. How should 
 young colonels, la plupart avec des mceurs de 
 grisette, reinspire the army with the ideas of honour 
 and constancy ? " And for the hundredth time the 
 lament is heard that "ignorance, frivolity, negligence, 
 cowardice have replaced the old virile and heroic 
 virtues." 
 
 To the actors in these scenes the general incapacity 
 and decadence were inexplicable, and to the few 
 who remembered earlier and better traditions the 
 present seemed, as Bernis calls it, a horrible night- 
 mare. To us, looking back, the obvious suggestion 
 
 304 
 
THE ART OF AN ARISTOCRACY 
 
 offers itself that the strength of France was not put 
 forth in this war because it was not really a French 
 war at all. Engaged in a quarrel of the King's 
 mistress, and led by the favourites and flunkeys of 
 Versailles, the rout of the French army at Rosbach, 
 and the disgraces of the campaigns that followed 
 reveal to us, not the degeneration of French 
 character and courage, but rather the total separa- 
 tion and divorce of the governing body from the 
 realities of French national life. It is curious to 
 observe how, while the pride of Choiseul and the 
 soldierly instinct of Saint-Germain and old Belleisle 
 prompt them to a reconstruction of the army and 
 the continuance of the war, Bernis, weaker but 
 much more clear-sighted, foretells the failure of such 
 a policy and lays a finger on the real cause of 
 mischief. " I am floored, not by our misfortunes, 
 but by the certainty that the true remedy will never 
 be applied. There is but one cure — a better 
 Govifrnment. Give me a good Government and I 
 will go on with the war, but there is no chance of 
 our getting one." A Government in touch with the 
 realities of the nation's life, that is what poor Bernis 
 feels the want of. It is the hopeless frivolity of the 
 present government that puzzles and sickens, and 
 indeed seriously threatens to send him off his head. 
 **We live like children," he moans, ^*the wills of 
 children control the governing principle." The 
 King, "nullement inquiet de nos inquietudes ni 
 embarrasse de nos embarras," has distractions of 
 his own into which it is well not to pry too closely. 
 The Court is the Court still. Its gaiety suffers no 
 eclipse. Rather the contrary, for defeats are always 
 
 U 305 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 something to talk about, and the loss of an army is 
 almost sure to inspire a good joke or two. In vain 
 poor Bernis tears his hair. '* II n'y a pas d'exemple 
 qu'on fait si gros jeu avec la meme indifference 
 qu'on jouerait une partie de quadrille." At last 
 he can stand it no longer. The jokes and gibbering 
 laughter round him break down his nerves. He 
 begs and implores to be dismissed from office, and, 
 having with infinite trouble achieved his own disgrace, 
 creeps away to his exile at Vic-sur-Aisne, glad at any 
 price to be quit of the nightmare existence he had 
 of late been leading. 
 
 All these symptoms, it will be seen, are of a piece, 
 and all may be referred to the same cause. The 
 purposeless, unmeaning quarrel, the unclothed and 
 unfed armies, the Court-favourite generals, the 
 languid operations in the field, the utter indifference 
 of the nation to the whole business, the idiot 
 laughter of the courtiers at their own reverses, the 
 frenzy and lamentations of poor Bernis — what are 
 all these signs but a testimony to the one root-fact 
 that the French Court has got altogether out of 
 touch with the realities of hfe ? Granting that, all 
 the rest follows. In conception and execution the 
 campaign is a consistent and perfectly frank avowal 
 that in the governing body frivolity has passed into 
 that phase when it assumes control of life. From 
 that final and terrible phase there is no return 
 possible. The rout of armies, the loss of colonies, 
 the starvation and misery of the people are events 
 which will be dealt with by this frivolity in accord- 
 ance with the laws of its own nature. You may 
 cut these people in pieces, but you will get nothinii^ 
 306 
 
THE ART OF AN ARISTOCRACY 
 real or serious out of them. They will pay their 
 visits of ceremony and talk trifles and gallantry in 
 the Bastille, and reserve, in all good faith, their 
 most polished witticisms for the scaffold, 
 
 And if these great events and the policy adopted 
 by the country bear witness to the dying out of the 
 sense of reality in the Court party, not less clearly 
 does this also appear when we turn to the intellectual 
 movement of the age. In France, more distinctly 
 than elsewhere, the idea leads the way, and the 
 great outburst of the Revolution was preceded forty 
 years earlier by an intellectual revolt of correspond- 
 ing energy and daring. It was during the decade 
 from 1750 to 1760 that this revolt declared itself. 
 The appearance of the Encyclopaedia may be likened 
 to that moment in a general action when, to the 
 scattered shots of scouts and advance guards, succeeds 
 the roar of heavy guns in position. The effect of 
 the publication in affording a rallying-point for 
 independent thinkers was decisive. The persecutions 
 by the Court and the Jesuits broke in vain upon the 
 movement. D'Alembert might be choked off, but 
 the indomitable Diderot gathered round him a body 
 of associates of unflinching tenacity. The crisis 
 had in it something of the excitement of an actual 
 conflict. It differs from most philosophic enter- 
 prises in this, that the theories and definitions of the 
 Encyclopaedists are not abstract theories and defini- 
 tions, but are designed for immediate use. They are 
 not shot off into the air, but are aimed at a mark. 
 The appearance of the first instalment of the Ency- 
 clopaedia marks the formal declaration of the mind 
 of France for the nation and the people, and against 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 the Court and the privileged class, and the agitation 
 which ensued is, as Lord Morley in his Life of 
 Diderot points out, not a speculative and philo- 
 sophical agitation, but a political and social one. 
 
 " Political ideas have been grasped as instruments ; 
 philosophy has become patriotism," are phrases in 
 which Lord Morley defines the character of this 
 great mental awakening. In article after article of 
 the Encyclopaedia the evils of the age are hinted at 
 or criticised. That more than a quarter of France 
 was lying untilled or abandoned ; that arbitrary 
 imposts resulted in the flight of the population to 
 the large towns ; that large tracts of land are turned 
 into wildernesses by the abuse of the game-preserving 
 system ; that an equal distribution of profits is 
 preferable to an unequal one, since the latter results 
 in the division of the people into two classes, "one 
 gorged with riches, the other perishing in misery " ; 
 these are the kind of points raised, and these, it will 
 be observed, are thrusts dealt in earnest. The 
 Society of Jesus clamours for the suppression of the 
 publication. The King wavers betwixt a snarl and 
 a whimper. It is suppressed, and Diderot is im- 
 prisoned. It is continued, and Diderot is released. 
 Meantime the movement all over the country 
 gathers head. In every province and country town 
 the pens are going. Ideas, with that wicked sparkle 
 in them which marks them as missiles, are hurled 
 from all sides against King and courtiers and priests 
 alike. The closeness of the act behind the thought 
 is indicated by the public excitement, and outrageous 
 placards, pamphlets, and satires of ever-increasing 
 bitterness and directness give that excitement vent. 
 308 
 
THE ART OF AN ARISTOCRACY 
 
 But this, after all, reveals a destructive rather than 
 a constructive purpose, and it is by its constructive 
 purpose that the real character of a movement 
 declares itself. What, then, is the constructive 
 purpose of the Encyclopaedists ? It may be indi- 
 cated in two words of Lord Morley's. They were 
 inspired, he says, by an " earnest enthusiasm for all 
 the purposes, interests, and details of productive 
 industry," and, following this bent, they attached an 
 importance to physical science and the practical 
 arts which marks "the distinct association with 
 pacific labour of honour and a kind of glory, such 
 as had hitherto been reserved for knights and friars." 
 A keen sympathy with, and earnest desire to re- 
 suscitate, all that is practical, all that is productive ; 
 sympathy with the workshop, the factory, the 
 agriculturist, the artisan, with all forms of useful 
 and fruitful labour, that is what constitutes the 
 attitude of the Encyclopaedists towards life. And 
 the desire to revive conditions favourable to this 
 useful and fruitful labour is their constructive 
 purpose. This is what forms the bond of brother- 
 hood between them, and this is what marks the 
 movement as the definite recognition of the basis 
 of a new " society." 
 
 And all this may be summed up by saying that 
 the object of this movement was to regain touch 
 with the realities of life. That is the long and short 
 of it. At the very moment when frivolity is entering 
 into undisputed command and, in all affairs of 
 public policy and private life, is busy turning every- 
 thing into unreality to suit its own nature, the mind 
 q{ France awakens to the character of the crisis and 
 
 309 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 declares for poor despised reality. To explode the 
 shams and make-believes which the spirit of frivolity 
 had evolved, and to raise up and reanimate all 
 those down-trodden and oppressed causes and 
 interests which constituted what was real in the 
 national life, became the aim of the French intellect. 
 If ever a nation was saved by ideas France was so 
 saved in the last half of the eighteenth century. 
 This movement it was which in the world of 
 thought and of ideas represented reality. What 
 share had the Court party in such a movement ; 
 what welcome did they accord it ? 
 
 No mental sensation is more curious than the 
 change we are conscious of in passing from the affairs 
 of the world, and the eager arguments and expositions 
 which were exciting the interest and curiosity of all 
 minds in France capable of such emotions, to the 
 affairs of the Court. Here all life seems under the 
 power of some spell or enchantment. No sound 
 from without penetrates the magic circle. It has 
 its own ideas, its own standards, its own tastes and 
 engrossing pursuits, all of which are ignored by the 
 world as the affairs of the world are by it ignored. 
 Looking at it from the outside you would say that 
 life within this circle was some acted charade or 
 pantomime, and that by-and-by the actors would 
 relapse into the pursuits and duties of everyday 
 life. Only when we have turned the pages 
 slowly of some of the abounding memoirs of the 
 period do we begin to acquire ourselves some 
 feeble consciousness of the seeming reality and 
 apparent genuineness of this sham existence. Let 
 us quote, as a specimen, the following account of 
 310 
 
THE ART OF AN ARISTOCRACY 
 
 the introduction of the Venetian ambassadress to 
 Court : 
 
 " Madame de Luynes made a curtsy to the Queen 
 and another to the ladies of the Court and then 
 went to receive Madame Zeno, the wife of the 
 Venetian ambassador, outside the door of the 
 Queen's room. They saluted each other, com- 
 plimented and kissed each other. Then they came 
 in to the Queen, Madame de Luynes walking in 
 front to the right, then the ambassadress, and after 
 her M. de Sainclot. Madame de Luynes having 
 taken up her position, Madame Zeno made one 
 curtsy to the Queen as she entered, a second in 
 the middle of the room, a third when she got close 
 to the Queen, and then kissed the hem of her 
 Majesty's robe and made a fourth curtsy, at the 
 same time addressing her a brief compliment, A 
 few minutes afterwards the King arrived by the 
 salon which serves as the Queen's withdrawing- 
 room. Madame Zeno immediately rose, as did all 
 the ladies. She made two or three curtsys, during 
 which the King, who had bowed to her as he came 
 in, advanced and kissed her, but only on one side 
 of the face. Madame Zeno then made another 
 curtsy. The King retired the same way he came. 
 The ambassadress then proceeded to repeat the 
 same three curtsys she had made on entering 
 except that, after the second, she made one to the 
 Court ladies, and reserved the third till she got to 
 the door." 
 
 The Due de Luynes, the husband of the lady 
 who made the first curtsy, was a very favourable 
 
 3" 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 
 specimen of a French aristocrat of his time. He 
 wrote his memoirs in seventeen vokimeS; and of 
 those seventeen vohimes the above quotation is a 
 fair sample. Upright and honourable, not wanting 
 in sense, he was a courtier and shared the limita- 
 tions of interest of the Court party. If the reader 
 will immerse himself for an hour or two in these 
 memoirs of the Due de Luynes, he will find 
 that, as the details of an interminable etiquette 
 are described and dissected, the solemn and un* 
 questioning seriousness of the treatment will 
 gradually have its effect upon him. Court cere- 
 mony and Court gossip will envelop him. He 
 will find himself accepting as matter of deadly 
 interest the most petty jealousies and intrigues, 
 scandals and whisperings, sarcasms and effronteries, 
 machinations and plots of mistresses and favourites, 
 and all the thousand trifles which compose the 
 tissue of this effete and bloodless existence. And 
 as the unreal becomes real, the real will become 
 unreal. He will hear the voices, speaking the 
 thoughts that are soon to be put into terrible 
 actions, die away into an unmeaning murmur. 
 Never is the serenity of this "beautiful Armida- 
 Palace," to use one of Carlyle's phrases, *' where 
 the inmates live enchanted lives," broken by any 
 sound from the outer world. A faint and faraway 
 note, with little meaning left in it, occasionally 
 penetrates, and our good duke raises his head to 
 catch the unusual sounds. '^ On dit que les esprits 
 s'echauffent," he mutters, vaguely troubled, to him- 
 self. And again, "Les esprils sont encore bien 
 61oign^s de la soumission que le roi demanded' 
 
 312 
 
THE ART OF AN ARISTOCRACY 
 
 And yet again, more puzzled than ever, *' la conduile 
 du Parlement devient plus singuliere de jour en 
 jour." Then back we go to the serious business of 
 life, to the number of horses Madame de la Tour- 
 nelle is to be allowed to drive in her carriage, or 
 the varieties of the royal meals and the distinction 
 between pot royal, petit pot royal, and grand pot 
 royal. 
 
 The severance of a section of society from the 
 mind and purpose of its age is, in the case of France, 
 particularly serious ; for it is by her hold on ideas 
 that France supports herself. That the English 
 aristocracy of the Georgian reign was inaccessible 
 to ideas did not greatly matter, since, the English 
 genius being practical, the hold of our aristocracy 
 on the national life has always consisted in the 
 active part played by it in party politics and the 
 government of the country. The French aristocracy 
 had long lost any such hold as that ; but another 
 hold, the participation in ideas, still remained 
 possible for it, and constituted its last chance of 
 salvation. It was not taken. The dilettante interest 
 in the new philosophy which titillated the curiosity 
 of French society stopped far short of active parti- 
 cipation. The reality of that interest was tested by 
 the Turgot Administration. Himself perhaps the 
 greatest example living of that spirit at once philoso- 
 phical and practical which animated the thought of 
 the age, Turgot, as a desperate remedy, was made 
 Minister of Finance in 1774, and the only really 
 sincere and heartfelt utterance of the Court on 
 record is the storm of protest with which it met his 
 suggestion that it should abandon the separate and 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 artificial system of life and shoulder the common 
 bmden of the economic crisis. 
 
 That protesting storm and the dismissal of Tiirgot 
 which followed it signified the rejection by Ver- 
 sailles of the ideas of the age, and is another 
 remarkable proof of the impossibiHty of getting 
 a thoroughly artificial class to face reality. For all 
 Taine's deceptive industry it is clear that the new 
 philosophy, the philanthropic craze, the return to 
 nature, were never more to the Court party than 
 toys and poses. Into the confines of the enchanted 
 circle the advice and warning of Turgot and the 
 reasoning of Diderot and Voltaire came with the 
 same dull and unmeaning sound as the booming 
 of the Rosbach cannon. The impression left upon 
 one's mind at last is a sense of separation amount- 
 ing to total severance between Court life and real 
 life. That severance from reality we distinguish as 
 the note of the Versailles section of the community, 
 and we shall surely be not far wrong if we discern 
 in this the necessity and justification of the oncoming 
 Revolution. The law of nature is inevitable that 
 the thing cut off from use is cut off from life. A 
 class whose splendour and luxury are the decoration 
 on solid services performed may be yet secure. 
 But a class whose splendour and luxury are their 
 own sole justification and aim in life is heading 
 dead for the guillotine. 
 
 Perhaps the reader will smile if, turning from 
 these great affairs of state once more to the Hert- 
 ford House galleries, I suggest that the spirit we 
 have been observing in matters of government is 
 the spirit which reigns among these tables and 
 
 3H 
 
THE ART OF AN ARISTOCRACY 
 cabinets. And yet, for those quick at seizing the 
 character and significance of such things, I doubt 
 if there exists in history, literature, or anything else, 
 any such effective help towards a complete realisa- 
 tion of the French Court and society as is provided 
 by an exhibition like the Wallace Collection. Let 
 the student who would really appreciate the causes 
 of the Revolution leave for an afternoon his journals 
 and memoirs, and, instead of building up laboriously 
 an intellectual conception of those causes, lay him- 
 self open here to an aesthetic conception of them. 
 Let him note the agreement and unanimity of all 
 that he sees in these rooms, and then go on to seek 
 the reason of this unanimity in the common mean- 
 ing and intention which all these things share. Let 
 him ask if this meaning does not consist in the 
 essentially decorative purpose of every object pre- 
 sent, in the fact that they one and all strain after 
 show and splendour, and turn their backs on reality 
 and the uses of everyday life. * Is it possible to 
 conceive a better expression of that spirit which the 
 aristocrats of France, shorn of their civic duties 
 and feudal responsibilities, brought to Versailles, 
 with which they inoculated the ruling principle, 
 and which, from that hour on, marks every act not 
 of society only but of the government ? Hence- 
 forth take any transaction you like, private or public, 
 and the spirit animating them will be the same. 
 Always the enthusiasm displayed is for the unreali- 
 ties at the expense of the realities of life. Children 
 are turned into toys, marriage is broken up by fugi- 
 tive intrigues, the colonies are abandoned in favour 
 of an Austrian Alliance, endless discourses on Court 
 
 315 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 punctilio occupy men's minds to the cxclasion of 
 the burning thoughts that are spurring France on to 
 deeds. On all sides and under all circumstances the 
 Court and the Court party, with an infallible instinct, 
 select the unreal and forsake the real. Their genuine 
 preoccupations, those into which they throw their 
 serious effort, are purely frivolous. To eclipse the 
 last mad freak by one still madder, at all costs so to 
 sparkle as to make jaded fashion stare, these are the 
 things worth living for. In every crisis the test we 
 learnt in the Hertford House galleries, "a decorative 
 rather than a useful purpose," applies to the conduct 
 of society and the government. 
 ^ These are, it seems to me, considerations which 
 should be borne in mind by lovers of this furniture. 
 They endue it with additional interest. Of its many 
 other attractions there is the less need to speak, 
 since these are nowadays appreciated at even more 
 perhaps than their legitimate value. But its his- 
 torical interest has been unaccountably neglected, 
 and of the large number of people to whose 
 sympathies it appeals so forcibly and who admire 
 it so enthusiastically, few, probably, see in it a 
 representation of the spirit which for fifty years 
 dominated the French Government and the French 
 aristocracy, and which led up finally to the catas- 
 trophe of 1789. 
 
 316 
 
SUMMARY 
 
 IN a concluding page or two I would ask the reader 
 to cast an eye back on the ground we have traversed 
 and consider what kind of significance and value we 
 have found in art j We have surveyed the Egyptian 
 people and their ancient immovable civilisation. We 
 have perceived in them a race mentally archaic, that 
 is to say, a race not inspired and goaded forward on 
 the path of progress by intellectual curiosity but 
 fixed in a smooth-worn rut of usage and mechanical 
 routine, having some relation, it would seem, to the 
 physical conformation of the country and circum- 
 stances in which they lived. In Egyptian art we 
 have seen a replica or image, as it were, of this 
 mental condition. The sausage-shaped columns of 
 Egyptian temples and the squat and shapeless 
 entablatures, so blind to all structural purpose, so 
 intellectually unconscious of their relation and 
 proportion to each other, have seemed the mere 
 expression of the state of intellectual insensibility in 
 which they were conceived. And so too the conven- 
 tionally sculptured figures, unreal and insensible 
 of the ideas and emotions expressible through the 
 human form, were equally significant of a state of 
 being in which the power of conscious observation 
 and analysis was altogether dormant. Here was an 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 art which spoke to us of the mental condition of the 
 Nile-dwelling people and brought that condition 
 home to us, an art, in short, which helped us to 
 know those who created it. 
 
 Then we turned to the Greeks, and directly we 
 turned to them we realised that we had to do with a 
 people who were intellectually alive, a people in 
 whom the intellectual faculty had become sensitive 
 and awake. We saw the awakened faculty declaring 
 itself in a quite new vitality and flexibility of thought 
 in literature and philosophy and all ideas connected 
 with the right ordering of hfe and conduct. The 
 note which makes all intellectualised races kin is 
 first struck by the Greeks. And simultaneously with 
 this we saw Greek art shaking off the old mechanical 
 routine and gradually animated by a full intellectual 
 conception of its functions. We saw the shapeless 
 Egyptian columns realised as actual columns and the 
 stereotyped Egyptian figures realised as actual 
 figures, each with all the possibilities latent in it 
 intellectually developed. Here again the art gave 
 us an indication of the genius of the race that called 
 it forth and helped us to know the race. 
 
 And when we went on to consider, in the case of 
 S. Sophia, the Greek treatment of Roman principles 
 of construction, this knowledge became clearer and 
 more vivid. We found the arch and lintel prin- 
 ciples, which in Roman architecture had been forced 
 into unwilling combination, separated from each 
 other and, in Justinian's great church, as full and 
 perfect an exposition of the arch principle given as 
 in earlier days, in the case of the Doric temple, had 
 been given of the lintel principle. Such examples 
 
 318 
 
SUMMARY 
 must familiarise us with the character of the Greek 
 genius and help us to realise its function and the 
 part it played in classic thought. We have added 
 elements to thought since the Greek days, but still 
 the intellectual lucidity of the Greek mind has the 
 power to correct and instruct the intellectual side of 
 our own nature. This intellectual lucidity was, I 
 suppose, the most precious thing in classical life, 
 and its power and influence, when manifested in 
 works of art, touch us with a singular intimacy. 
 Greek art, I repeat, looked at in this way, helps us 
 to know the Greeks. 
 
 And again when we passed on to Arab art the 
 same kind of insight was accorded. We found 
 ourselves dealing, in the Arabs, with a people of an 
 extraordinarily strongly marked and peculiar tem- 
 perament ; a people ardent, restless and volatile as 
 flame ; a people instinctively impatient of steadfast- 
 ness and stability in all its forms. The broad gap 
 between classical civilisation and the civilisation of 
 modern Europe is occupied, as mist occupies a valley, 
 by the fantastic exhalations of Arab science and Arab 
 philosophy and Arab divinity. And, as was easy to 
 see, all these manifestations of Arab activity, all the 
 thoughts of the desert race, all its efforts in learn- 
 ing, in governing, in campaigning, were penetrated 
 by that light, whimsical and fiery impulsiveness 
 which, to those who know the Arab in his native 
 haunts, seems so evidently an outcome of the desert 
 itself. This character, so impulsive, yet so fickle 
 and unstable in all its impulses, is precisely the 
 character given back to us by the whimsically shaped 
 arches, the ingeniously tangled designs and all the 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 medley of fantastic notions and experiments, tossed 
 together in the flimsiest manner of construction 
 possible, which constitute Arab architecture. An 
 architecture like this I say, as we get to understand 
 its point of view and enter into the spirit of it, helps 
 us likewise to understand its builders. It is a means 
 given to us to know the Arab. 
 
 Well then, leaving the Arab, we came on to the 
 style of the Northern nations ; \ and this, too, we 
 looked at from the same point of view, the point of 
 view of life. We glanced back into history. We 
 realised that the decrepitude and decay of the 
 Roman Empire were due to the lack of human 
 vitality and individual initiative. We saw those 
 qualities supplied and reinstilled into the West by 
 the Gothic invaders. We recognised this as the 
 contribution of our race to the sum total of 
 human ideas. In due course we saw the barbaric 
 nations forming and the barbaric communities as- 
 suming definite shape. We looked at these mediae- 
 val societies and at once we recognised in all their 
 institutions, guilds, corporate rights and ideals of 
 citizenship the manifestations and working out of 
 the old Gothic leaven of liberty. This was new in 
 society. We turned to art. In the Gothic minster 
 the spirit of democratic freedom and initiative 
 seemed embodied for the first time. The very 
 stone seemed animated. Here was something new 
 in art, yet how graphic of the life of the age ! The 
 tall battling vaults hold the spirit of seven centuries 
 of racial strife. The keen spire that crowns and 
 stills them quivers with the same emotional fervour 
 as the great crusading' pilgrimages in which medi- 
 320 
 
SUMMARY 
 aeval energy found its safety-valvej Down in the 
 shadows of the aisles capital and corbel are carved 
 with illustrations of the popular life of the day : 
 sowing and reaping and ploughing, the blacksmith's 
 craft and the carpenter's and the mason's, the fears, 
 the superstitions, the fancies beautiful or grotesque 
 that had caught the popular ear. All these are the 
 themes and motives which animate the new style of 
 building. Let the reader accept the clue. What is 
 it that signalises this architecture as unique among 
 the styles of the world ? Its spirit of democratic 
 energy, the tide of human vitality that runs through 
 it. Turn to the race that built it and ask the same 
 question : what is it that signalises that race among 
 the races of the world ? And the answer comes back 
 in the same words again — its spirit of democratic 
 energy and the human vitality which animate it. 
 Can any one fail to feel the insight into human 
 character afforded by an art like this ? 
 
 We came to the Renaissance, to the age of in- 
 tellect's awakening. In human society, in Italy 
 first, then spreading over Europe, we recognised 
 the intellectual influence ; we recognised its temper, 
 its spirit of calmness, its disinterested and wide 
 survey. This was lacking in mediaeval society. 
 But it was not lacking in classical society ; no, it 
 was the thing of chiefest value in that society, the 
 note which distinguishes classic thought. Mere 
 was the inward, mental bond between the modern 
 Renaissance and Rome and Athens. And how was 
 it in art ? The old classical architecture had 
 developed and preserved one thing of value, the 
 sense of spaciousness and aerial amplitude which 
 
 X 321 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 belong to horizontal expansion. That had quite 
 gone out of fashion in mediaeval architecture. The 
 Gothic point has no knowledge of the quality of 
 breadth any more than Gothic society has know- 
 ledge of the intellectual temper and survey. But 
 with Renaissance art the old quality comes back. 
 Breadth is once more esteemed ; spaciousness again 
 takes rank as an aesthetic motive. Why ? Be- 
 cause that force is once more active in life which 
 ^X^ thus voices itself into art. Because intellectualism 
 with its calm and luminous outlook always will 
 clothe itself in an amply proportioned art and make 
 itself a home in an architecture of horizontal ex- 
 pansion. This is intellect's perpetual endeavour ; 
 and who, feeling the natural afBnity which exists 
 between intellect in man and breadth in architec- 
 ture, can watch and follow throughout Europe the 
 change from vertical to horizontal without feeling 
 that a light is being thrown for him on the mental 
 changes that are going on that it is these changes 
 which the changes in style portray, and that, here 
 again, art is fulfilling its function of an interpreter 
 of human thought and character ? 
 Then with sculpture. What is it that prevents 
 " Renaissance society from being really and serenely 
 classical, from being secure and content in the 
 sphere of intellectualism ? The Western mind has 
 received into itself the spiritual idea, and its own 
 spiritual faculties have been quickened and stimu- 
 lated by the appeal. It can never again retrieve 
 the old classical standpoint. It can never be 
 satisfied again with a merely human ideal, nor ever 
 succeed again in hmiting man's thoughts and 
 322 
 
SUMMARY 
 aspirations within the definable bounds of the 
 understanding. There is a seething spiritual dis- 
 content underlying the Renaissance, and spiritual 
 whisperings and admonitions distract its intellectual 
 calm. What could this do but come out in the 
 art of the period ? Once before the same thing 
 had happened. Classical thought in its later stages 
 had been impregnated with spiritual ideas, and 
 immediately, as thought passed from the definable 
 to the indefinable plane, the sculptured creations 
 of the artist exhibited the transition in their own 
 inarticulate struggles and half-vain efforts at ex- 
 pression. The Renaissance revealed in life the 
 combination of the same conflicting motives — the 
 intellectualism that had revived and the spiritualism 
 that would not be quenched ; and immediately in 
 art the same symptoms reappear and the inexpres- 
 sible emotions in the marble betray the conflict 
 that is going on in the minds of men. Who that 
 inclines to summarise the Renaissance as the age 
 of Reason and have done with it, can enter into 
 the testimony thus afforded by art without feeling 
 his consciousness of that age deepen and expand ? 
 Hidden motives come to light, spiritual depths are 
 revealed, a combat betwixt inward and outward is 
 visibly depicted. There dawns upon his mind a 
 different, a completer conception of the spirit of 
 those centuries, and history itself and the types and 
 characters and acts of men take on a new significance 
 and render up a fuller meaning. Such are the con- 
 sequences of accepting art as an expression of life. 
 
 And then, from the brief glance we took at the 
 course and development of painting, the same 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 results were forthcoming. The intellectual awaken- 
 ing of the Renaissance was, in life, gradual. It 
 began, as always, in the study of man himself — 
 the discovery of man by man as it has been called — 
 and it extended gradually into all the departments of 
 science and a zealous analysis of all the phenomena 
 of nature. Art followed the same course. The 
 domains which intellect conquered were yielded 
 successively to art. Would the reader realise what 
 the nature and feeling of the intellectual awakening 
 was like ? Let him stand before some half-way 
 Renaissance picture and observe what things have 
 come under intellect's survey and what have not* 
 Some zones are still wrapped in obscurity ; others 
 are fully illuminated. To the end the wild haunts 
 of nature maintain a degree of inaccessibility and 
 remain unpaintable ; and indeed, as we often say, 
 it is only quite lately that the wild and rugged kinds 
 of scenery have come to possess any attraction for 
 man, these being the most remote of all from human 
 sympathy. Perhaps the effort at comprehension 
 which art always makes of us is harder in this 
 instance than in the others I have attempted. I 
 believe we have next to no idea what seeing with 
 the brain, or intellectual realisation, really means, 
 or in the least appreciate the difference between 
 that and the mere physical act of seeing. We 
 would admit that a cow's vision of a landscape 
 is not our vision. Yet the difference is not in the 
 seeing. The image of the landscape on the retina 
 of the cow's eye is, I imagine, the same as our 
 own, but its elements are not distinguishable to 
 the cow because they are not mentally appreciated. 
 
 3H 
 
SUMMARY 
 
 In the same way primitive races and savages often 
 do not distinguish at all differences in things which 
 do not immediately concern them. Never having 
 taken a mental interest in such things, the signifi- 
 cance of their shape, or even that they have a 
 distinctive shape, has never struck them. That 
 realisation, when it comes, imparts to the mind a 
 sensation of delight, for it is more than the recogni- 
 tion of an outward phenomenon ; it is a discovery 
 by the mind of a faculty of its own. The Renais- 
 sance is full of this delight of the mind in putting 
 forth its own power of recognition. We feel that 
 delight in the life of the age, in the kind of breathless 
 expectation which hovers over society, in the keen 
 mental excitement which prevails. Yet how hard 
 to realise the feelings that prevailed. What gives 
 the excitement, the expectation is precisely the fact 
 that things are undergoing before men's very eyes a 
 metamorphosis. What we want is some kind of 
 evidence that shall catch the metamorphosis half 
 way. The reader has seen in picture-cleaners' shops 
 canvases half black and obscured, half clean and 
 clearly defined. The visible universe in the age of 
 the Renaissance is making this change from obscure 
 to clear before men's eyes. In Italian painting we 
 have as nearly the evidence we want as it is possible 
 to get it. We have the unrealised, obscure side of 
 nature given in all its dull opaqueness and the 
 realised side given in all its clearness, while passing 
 from canvas to canvas we see the vision extending 
 and one thing after another coming out of darkness 
 into light, thereby giving us an actual representation 
 of the very process which was the inspiration of the 
 
 325 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 
 Renaissance. What other instance, I ask, can do 
 this as art can do it, or aid us as art can aid us to a 
 comprehension of the mind of that epoch ? 
 
 Finally we came down to a time comparatively 
 recent and cast a glance at the French life and art 
 of the eighteenth century. I need not here recapi- 
 tulate those reasons and arguments which led us to 
 recognise in the art of the age an image of existing 
 society and, as it were, a commentary on the con- 
 ditions which were sweeping France onward to the 
 rocks of the Revolution. My object in this brief 
 recapitulation is to leave the reader, if I can, with a 
 clear impression on his mind of the point of view from 
 which we have been considering art, or rather of the 
 purpose and use to which we have been endeavour- 
 ing to put it. The proper study of mankind is 
 man, says Pope. Certainly of all earthly studies it is 
 the most engrossing and permanently interesting. 
 The wish of every historian is to make real to our 
 mind's eye past generations. The secret hope, 
 whether we know it or not, which drives us to 
 histories and all memoirs and old records of the 
 past, is the hope of getting a little closer in sympathy 
 and understanding to those vanished ones, who yet, 
 we blindly feel, have a share in us to this day ; so 
 that in seeking to know them it is after self-know- 
 ledge, perhaps,[that we are groping. 
 
 Such is the strong appeal of the past, and it is in 
 this connection that I want the reader to think of 
 the view of art I have been suggesting. How are 
 we to obtain the desired knowledge ? Usually only 
 the help of literature is invoked. We can read 
 histories, or we can read romances. The objection 
 326 
 
SUMMARY 
 
 to the first is that what we get are not real men 
 and women, but only evidence to the effect that 
 certain men and w^omen acted in a certain way. 
 The objection to the second is that while real men 
 and women are represented, their reality is no proof 
 that they ever existed. The reality of Bois Guilbert 
 and Front de Boeuf in Scott's pages is no proof that 
 they ever existed as Norman barons. In short, 
 what the historians give us of the past is usually the 
 truth with very little life in it, and what the 
 romancers give us is usually the life with very little 
 truth in it. 
 
 But art's testimony is both living and true. How 
 living it is those who have thought themselves 
 into the forms of Egyptian and Greek art, or have 
 felt in their own blood the excitement of the Arab 
 attack on ancient structural features, or lived 
 through, in art, any of its great crises and trans- 
 formations, can best tell. The forms of art are 
 wrought out of the living spirit of their age. And 
 they are true, they are to be trusted. It is no 
 question, in their case, of one man's thoughts, or 
 one man's imagination. Art in its great creative 
 phases is an utterance, an embodiment, of the 
 ruling thought and prevalent conviction of that 
 age. It is an expression of life registered at the 
 moment when life is most capable of articulate utter- 
 ance. This is what I want the reader to feel ; this 
 is what I would attempt to indicate to him. To 
 be one with our kind is a human instinct best realised 
 through the study of art, for it is through the 
 study of art that we enter into the thoughts of man- 
 kinds 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 IN the following notes I have endeavoured to pick 
 out from the multitude of books on art a few of 
 those likely to be most useful to amateurs. Let me 
 venture to warn all such, to begin with, against the 
 prevailing supposition that the last word in art is 
 necessarily the best word. Modern art criticism is 
 as vague and uncertain in its theories as modern 
 art is vague and uncertain in its aims. The art 
 criticism of a generation ago was, as I believe any 
 disinterested reader will discover, stronger, more 
 consistent, and richer in ideas than the art criticism 
 of to-day, 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 The works of Professor Flinders Petrie, Sir Gaston 
 Maspero and Professor Wallis Budge are exhaustive 
 both as regards Egyptian history and Egyptian art. 
 Their historical records of matters of fact justify the 
 opinion of the Nile civilisation expressed in the 
 present chapters. Their estimate of Egyptian art 
 is usually high, especially in the case of Professor 
 Flinders Petrie, who seems to regard it as superior 
 in certain vital respects to any which has since been 
 created. The object he ascribes to that art, how- 
 ever, namely, the dignifying of man by an exhibition 
 of a power and scale of work superior to Nature's, 
 manifested in structures which should eclipse the 
 hills in size and solidity, seems questionable as an 
 aesthetic motive. Sir Gaston Maspero, in his 
 
 328 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 "Contes Populaires/' maintains, in opposition to 
 Mr. Hogarth, that the Egyptians were by no means 
 a sedentary and home-abiding people. The excep- 
 tions he mentions would obviously be drawn from 
 the wealthy classes rather than the masses. 
 
 I must particularly mention the " Life in Ancient 
 Egypt " of Herr Erman, translated by Helen Mary 
 Tirard. It is written with a broad common sense 
 and breadth of judgment, which are the very 
 qualities most to be desired in treating the 
 subject. " Egypt and Western Asia in the light of 
 Modern Discoveries " by Messrs. King and Hall, and 
 " The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia " 
 by A. H. Sayce, may both, more particularly the 
 latter, be read with advantage. 1 would add to 
 these "The Nearer East" by D. G. Hogarth. An 
 excellent work on Mesopotamia and the methods of 
 its ancient irrigation is " The Land of the Eastern 
 Caliphate " by G. Le Strange. 
 
 M. Choisy in his " Histoire de TArchitecture " 
 describes the rules of proportion which he believes 
 were practised by Egyptian architects. I would 
 refer the reader to the same author's " L'Art de 
 batir chez les Egyptiens," where, on page 65, he 
 will find some results given of the methods of 
 estimating bulk which appear to have contented 
 them. M. Jean Capart's work on " Les Debuts de 
 I'Art en Egypte " is particularly suggestive in those 
 parts which deal with the evolution of geometrical 
 designs out of graphic representation. Among 
 general works on architecture Fergusson still holds 
 much the same place that Gibbon holds among 
 historians. I fear I cannot cite his authority in 
 support of my own estimate of Egyptian building. 
 For some, to me quite incomprehensible, reason he 
 seems to think that even the diminished base which 
 gives its peculiar sausage shape to the Egyptian 
 column is a "graceful" device. Professor Blom- 
 field's book has been dealt with in the text. Professor 
 
 329 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 
 Russell Sturgis in his " History of Architecture " 
 brings out clearly the fact that the interior of the 
 Great Hall at Karnak was so crowded with huge 
 columns that no view giving a sense of the general 
 proportions of the interior was ever possible. He 
 appears to think that the architecture owed its chief 
 effect to the painting and sculpture with which it 
 was decorated and to the heavy chiaroscuro in which 
 it was plunged. Having demonstrated the impossi- 
 bility of appreciating pure form under the conditions 
 that prevailed, he concludes that the Egyptians "were 
 as much interested in column architecture as even 
 the Greeks of the time of Pericles." 
 
 Finally I must mention M. Am61ineau's '* Essai 
 sur I'Evolution Historique and Philosophique des 
 Id^es Morales dans I'Egypte Ancienne." M. Ame- 
 lineau lays stress on the rise of an upper or landlord 
 class among the population of Egypt. He, however, 
 admits that " innumerable proofs " remain to us of 
 the primitive superstition which " demeura vivante 
 durant tout I'Empire ^gyptien et qui existe encore 
 aujourd'hui parmi les plus basses, pour ne pas 
 dire dans toutes les classes de la population de 
 I'Egypte " ; a conclusion which agrees with that 
 arrived at by Sayce, Hogarth and others. » 
 
 To put the matter in a nutshell, the question the 
 reader will have to ask himself is this : Can he 
 imagine a civilisation great, in the sense of enduring 
 and very firmly established, but not great in the 
 sense of being far advanced intellectually and 
 spiritually ? Can he imagine a civilisation not 
 really based upon or nourished by the intellectual 
 faculty, but supported by the strength of usage and 
 routine, and remaining immovably fixed in the 
 archaic phase which precedes intellectual develop- 
 ment ? I do not see why such a '* civilisation " 
 should not exist under certain circumstances, and 
 the circumstances of the Nile valley seem precisely 
 the ones fitted to it. Any way, if the reader admits 
 
 330 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 the idea of such a civilisation and reflects on the 
 probable aspect of its life, he will, I think, find that 
 what we know of the life of the Nile Valley tallies 
 pretty closely with such a conception. He will 
 also, I believe, find that Egyptian art readily 
 advances to meet such a life and interpret it.) 
 
 CHAPTER H 
 
 In addition to the books mentioned at the end of 
 the last chapter, I may refer the reader who desires 
 to obtain a thorough insight into the action and 
 influence of the Nile to Sir W. Willcocks' ''The 
 Nile in 1904," H. S. Lynn's *' Physiography of the 
 Nile and its Basin," Monsieur Palanque's " Le Nil 
 a' I'Epoque Pharaon," and Sir W. Gaston's " Basin 
 of the Upper Nile," in Parliamentary Reports, 1904. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 I commend to the reader's study the two important 
 Histories of Greek Sculpture by Perrot and Chipiez 
 and by A. S. Murray. Also Professor E. A. 
 Gardner's "Six Greek Sculptors" and "Religion 
 and Art in Ancient Greece." Professor Lowy's 
 " Nature in Early Greek Art " is an invaluable and 
 very suggestive little work on the origins of archaic 
 art ; and Pater's " Beginnings of Greek Sculpture " 
 contains suggestions of value, as also do H. B. 
 Walters' " Greek Art " and " The Art of the Greeks." 
 
 Professor Butcher's works seem to me to give a 
 clearer idea of the Greek ideal in matters of thought 
 and character than any I have met with, but I may 
 mention also Professor Jebb's essays. Professor 
 Evans' Reports on the excavation of the Palace of 
 Knossos, Professor Myres' catalogue of the Cyprus 
 Museum and Professor Jevons' " History of Greek 
 Architecture," " Manual of Greek Antiquities," and 
 " Idea of God in Early Religion." 
 
 ^31 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 
 It is unnecessary really to quote authorities foi 
 this chapter, as I have merely touched on a few 
 points which are matters of common knowledge. 
 The case would have been different had I en- 
 deavoured to trace the rise and early steps of the 
 Greek genius in matters of thought and literature 
 on the one hand and in art on the other. I believe 
 the two would have shown in all their stages the 
 correspondence which they exhibit in their later 
 phases of development, but I must be content with 
 suggesting to the reader the identity of the two 
 processes. A book to be read with care, I must 
 add, in M. Henri Lechat's *' La Sculpture attique 
 avant Phidias." 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 The reader must obtain access to Penrose's 
 '* Measurements of the Parthenon." This is the 
 only English work I know of which sets forth with 
 care and fullness the inflections wrought by the 
 Greeks in the proportions of their favourite style. 
 It is extraordinary that so little should have been 
 made since of these invaluable hints. Fergusson re- 
 mains one of the best authorities on Greek architec- 
 ture. Choisy devotes himself as usual to an elaborate 
 description and illustration of the details of con- 
 struction. Mr. Lethaby has a good account of the 
 Parthenon and its sculptors in his "Greek Build- 
 ings," though he discusses the question of the 
 variation of Greek forms in a way which seems to 
 show that the question is not one which has very 
 seriously engaged his interest. As regards the 
 Greek ethical qualities, as signally manifested in 
 Greek art as in Greek philosophy, my advice to 
 the general reader is to concentrate, as I have said, 
 on Professor Butcher. I need scarcely point out 
 that in what I have written it is not implied that the 
 builders of the Doric temples consciously wrought 
 
 332 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 their temples in obedience to ethical dictates. They 
 simply built no doubt, as all men build, in their own 
 image ; that which appeared fit and pleasing to them 
 in outward form being the image of their own 
 thought. None the less must they have been fortified 
 and sustained by the contemplatation of forms 
 dictated by the ideas they most valued. This is the 
 great advantage in matters of art which the Greek 
 civilisation has possessed, that its ethical principles 
 of harmony, unity and proportion could be easily 
 transferred to art. The transference at once lent a 
 dignity and significance to art which it has never since 
 possessed. There are, I may add, many interesting 
 and subtle suggestions in M. Boutmy's ''Le Par- 
 thenon et le Genie grec." Professor E. A. Gardner's 
 "Ancient Athens" is among the most able and sym- 
 pathetic of the more exhaustive works on the subject. 
 It is, however, disappointing in this — that the author, 
 having mentioned with enthusiasm the discoveries 
 of Penrose and described one or two instances of 
 their application, seems immediately afterwards to 
 forget their existence, and leaves a topic of which 
 he has barely indicated the significance. 
 
 An interesting book which I did not see till my 
 own volume was in the hands of the publisher, is 
 Mr. Stoughton Holborn's "Introduction to the Archi- 
 tectures of European Religions." Mr. Stoughton 
 Holborn combats the theory that the inflections of 
 Greek architectural forms were, in all cases at any 
 rate, designed to correct optical illusions, and falls 
 back upon the principle of aesthetics for the " main 
 reasons." I have not space here to discuss the 
 question, which is a subtle and complicated one. 
 The arguments he uses have often formed the 
 subjects of my own thought, and I believe there is 
 much truth in them. What I would here point out 
 is that whatever be the solution of these curvatures, 
 their extreme delicacy is equally a proof of the 
 Greek cultivation of the power of vision. Mr. 
 
 333 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 
 Stoughton Holborn himself notes this. "What- 
 ever," he says, "be the interpretation of these 
 subtleties, one inference at least is certain, namely, 
 the refinement of the Greek eye." 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 M. Choisy's " L'Art de batir chez les Romains " 
 gives the author's usual minute analysis of method. 
 When he passes from matters of fact to matters of 
 theory, his conclusions are perhaps in some degree 
 questionable. He belongs to the group which seeks 
 the solution of styles in conditions of labour and 
 the material used. Rome's massive constructions 
 are, he affirms, the natural fruit of slave labour, and 
 never could, owing to the tremendous weight of their 
 masses of masonry, have been erected by free com- 
 munities. "On apergoit sans peine les raisons qui 
 nous les interdisent." They belong " aux temps 
 de I'esclavage et des corvees." But is not physical 
 science in the hands of free men a more power- 
 ful instrument in the wielding of material than 
 slavery could ever have been ? M. Choisy adds that 
 "les m^thodes romaines ne sont possibles qu'a 
 un grand empire dont les forces sont concentrees 
 sous un gouvernement absolu." But what about 
 the miniature Greek states of Sicily which mani- 
 pulated masonry on a far more tremendous scale 
 than any the Romans ever used ? The process of 
 seeking explanations in external facts always lands 
 one in difficulties. 
 
 M. Gabriel Millet's work on " Le Monastere de 
 Daphn6 " is an exhaustive treatise on a particular 
 example of the Byzantine style, and " The Monas- 
 tery of St. Luke of Stiris " by Messrs. Schultz and 
 Barnsley is another work of the same kind. I 
 heartily wish that the writers of both these volumes 
 had given a little more attention to the scheme of 
 lighting of the two buildings and the effects of 
 
 334 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 chiaroscuro in relation to the use of colour. Some 
 of the photographs of the latter church are in this 
 respect most interesting, revealing as they do those 
 rich effects of twilight which are inseparable from 
 the purpose of Byzantine art. I cannot resist quot- 
 ing from MM. Gayet and Errard's ^'L'Art Byzantine" 
 the following description of the emotions which 
 the soul of an onlooker feels beneath the domes of 
 St. Mark's : '• Un calme contemplatif en descend 
 vers elle, une s6r6nit6 douce, mystique, famili^re a 
 rOrient." It is the keynote of the interior, M. 
 Charles Diehl's " Justinien et la civilisation Byzan- 
 tine" has the signal recommendation that it deals 
 with an architectural style in conjunction with the 
 circumstances out of which it arose. M. Bayet's 
 " L'Art Byzantine " may be read with advantage ; 
 but the best description of the church of St. Sophia 
 I have come across is that by Messrs. W. R, Lethaby 
 and Harold Swainson. Fergusson on this building 
 is also particularly good, and I commend to the 
 reader's attention his remarks on its logical develop- 
 ment of the arch principle and superiority in this 
 respect over our mediaeval cathedrals. 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 The most important qualification for a right 
 understanding of Arab art is an insight into the 
 Arab national character. Best and most helpful of 
 all books in this respect is Doughty's ''Travels in 
 Arabia Deserta." Burckhardt's " Notes on Bedouins 
 and Wahabys " and '^ Travels in Arabia " ; Burton's 
 " Pilgrimage to Meccah " and Lady Anne Blunt's 
 " Pilgrimage to Nejd " may be read in the same 
 connection." Be sure also and read " Le Sahara " 
 by Henri Schirmer. As regards the architecture of 
 the race -Fergusson's chapters on the various styles 
 of Syria, Egypt, Persia, India, Spain, and Turkey 
 constitute the most moderate and rational descrip- 
 
 335 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 
 tion known to me. M. Choisy in his ** fi istoire 
 de 1' Architecture " analyses the style in his usual 
 remorseless fashion. He refers the reader to the 
 collection of Arab geometrical designs by M. Bour- 
 goin, consisting of the usual geometrical figures 
 interwoven with a deadly mechanical persistence 
 which has the effect of drops of water falling one 
 by one upon the brain. Nothing more destitute of 
 any kind of intelligence or animation can be 
 conceived, and the ingenuity that can satisfy 
 itself with the reiteration of these shallow tricks 
 seems like a confession of intellectual impotence. 
 Choisy, departing from the examination of form, 
 hazards, by-the-by, one very remarkable observation 
 on Arab art. After telling us that the countries in 
 which the Arab style had its birth were those in 
 which Byzantine had not struck deep roots, he 
 proceeds, ^'au lieu d'accepter les proc^d^s byzan- 
 tins, I'art musulman remonte a la source d'ou ces 
 proced^s sont issus, et en s'inspirant des principes 
 qui avaient domine I'architecture de Constantinople, 
 il arrive a des combinaisons, a des formes entiere- 
 ment etrangeres a I'Empire Grec." I fancy that 
 those who have followed the beginning of Arab art 
 in Cairo and North Africa, and who recall the 
 flimsy material and childishly weak and vague 
 designs of a style obviously uncertain of its own 
 purpose, will wonder at the claim here made, and 
 ask whether it really could have been the case that 
 these earliest Arab builders could have divined in 
 the works they saw around them an ulterior source 
 of inspiration and deliberately worked back to the 
 principles of an earlier art in order to evolve results 
 of their own. I have had a great many books on 
 Arab architecture through my hands of late years in 
 my capacity as reviewer, but as they invariably deal 
 with their subject from the emotional and romantic 
 point of view I shall not introduce them more 
 particularly to the reader. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 There are such a multitude of books dealing with 
 Gothic architecture that it is difficult to make a 
 selection. Let me advise the amateur in this matter 
 not to be put off studying his Ruskin. It matters very 
 little to what extent Ruskin was right or wrong in 
 his conclusions ; what does matter is that he viewed 
 his subject from the right standpoint. Architecture 
 to him was human expression, the expression of the 
 emotions and aspirations of its builders. Instead of 
 looking to brick and stone for the source of the 
 motives of a style he looked to the hearts and minds 
 of men, and roughly speaking he is about as much 
 richer in intellectual and emotional matter than the 
 professional writer, as hearts and minds are richer 
 than bricks and stones. Though you discard every 
 one of his doctrines, yet in forcing you to look at 
 architecture as a human product he will deserve 
 more of you than all other writers on the subject put 
 together. Fergusson is sane and moderate and 
 thorough. Mr. Lethaby's "Mediaeval Art'* is a 
 thoughtful, very readable work. The author is in 
 sympathy with his subject. His account of the 
 transition from Romanesque to Gothic vaulting is 
 clear and full. Mr. Jackson in his " Reason in 
 Architecture" treats the same interesting question 
 with equal care. In a chapter entitled " Relation of 
 Art to Construction," Mr. Jackson deals at some 
 length with an article of my own on Gothic archi- 
 tecture which originally appeared in the Edinburgh 
 Review and which now forms Chapter viii. of the 
 present book. I am grateful to him for the kind way 
 in which he treats my essay, but I suspect the 
 difference between our points of view is more funda- 
 mental than he makes out. Professor Simpson ,who 
 has lately published a history of architecture, is 
 among the sternest of the supporters of the construc- 
 
 Y 337 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 
 tional school. " Properly speaking," he observes, 
 " Gothic had no birth. What is called the birth of 
 Gothic was but the coming of age of Romanesque." 
 The theory is that because a style forms out of a 
 preceding style therefore it is not a style at all. Mr. 
 Russell Sturgis is on the same side. Gothic with 
 him is so entirely an affair of the material that he will 
 not even allow the human share in it which Mr, 
 Jackson allows. ** It took its origin," he says of the 
 new style, " in the second half of the twelfth century, 
 that origin being wholly constructional," Mr. C. H. 
 Moore goes also very fully into the question of 
 vaulting. "The Gothic system was immediately 
 evolved," he tells us, '* out of the Romanesque of 
 Northern France." There being no particular reason, 
 however, for stopping at Romanesque, Mr. Moore 
 traces the style back to " the earliest departure from 
 the principles and constructive forms of the art of 
 Imperial Rome." M. Enlart has probably had 
 more to do with the triumph of the constructional 
 theory than any one else. His devotion to the 
 material is so great and his insensibility to the human 
 expressiveness of form so absolute, that he is able 
 to declare that Gothic took the place sans secousse of 
 the old Romanesque, and even that the new archi- 
 tecture is " anim^e du meme esprit que I'art ante- 
 rieur." What are we to think when we are told 
 that the clusters of fei*vent Gothic points and the 
 thin lines in almost visible motion that rocket from 
 floor to summit of roof of Gothic nave and choirs 
 are " animated by the same spirit " as the ponderous 
 round-arched vaults of Romanesque ? I must not 
 forget to mention Viollet-le-Duc's " Diet. Raisonn6," 
 which treats the subject in a more vital fashion and 
 is full of ideas of interest. But my last recommen- 
 dation to any one wanting to make acquaintance with 
 Gothic is first to saturate his mind with a knowledge 
 of mediaeval life, of the mediaeval boroughs and guilds 
 and the mediaeval ideal of citizenship, and then, with 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 those thoughts in his mind, to stand in a Gothic 
 interior and accept its influence until the structural 
 forms around him seem the very utterance of the 
 ideas he has acquired, 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 The later phases of Gothic architecture are de- 
 picted in the usual histories. Ruskin for ideas and 
 Fergusson for facts remain among the best of the 
 authorities. Among recent books Mr. Blomfield's 
 " History of the Rise of Renaissance Architecture 
 in England" deserves especial attention, and his 
 " Studies in Architecture " should also be read. I 
 also recommend Mr. C. H. Moore's " Character of 
 Renaissance Architecture " and Mr. G. A. Cumming's 
 *' History of Architecture in Italy." Another larger 
 volume which contains a great deal of information 
 is Mr. Gotch's " Early Renaissance Architecture in 
 England." The point to be borne in mind in study- 
 ing the decline of Gothic and the rise of Renaissance 
 art in England is that the English Renaissance is 
 as much of home growth as of foreign importation. 
 Quite without Italy's help we should have had a 
 Renaissance of some sort, and that because the 
 natural maturing and ripening of the national 
 character was making for that end. A certain 
 breadth of outlook, a pleasure in thought for thought's 
 sake, were developing from within the national 
 character. They fed naturally on the products that 
 suited them, and in due course came within the 
 attraction of Italian methods, just as Italy, on the 
 same quest, had come within the attraction of 
 classical methods. But this ripening of the 
 national mind did, before turning to Italy, attempt 
 an expression of itself in the national art. Tudor 
 architecture is pure Northern Renaissance. It is an 
 attempt to compose a style of horizontal propor- 
 tions out of existing national forms of architecture. 
 
 339 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 
 That attempt has not met with the attention or 
 attracted the interest which it should have done. 
 It shows two things : First, that the Renaissance 
 movement was no " revolution " but a natural pro- 
 cess of mental development ; and second, that this 
 process of mental development will, even if left to 
 itself and quite apart from any classical sugges- 
 tions, express itself in a style of horizontal pro- 
 portions. On the other hand, it is important to 
 remember in regard to Italian Gothic that it 
 is not the mere ignorant haphazard style it is 
 commonly represented to be, but that all its efforts 
 and alterations are directed to a definite purpose, 
 and that the very purpose which the Tudor style 
 afterwards attempted in the North, namely, the 
 purpose of obtaining horizontal amplitude and 
 space out of a vertical style of architecture. M. 
 Enlart has devoted a volume to Italian Gothic, 
 and his book deserves mention because of the 
 evident influence it has exerted over recent English 
 writers. M. Choisy and M. Enlart both exert 
 this influence, and it has, I think, done harm. 
 Theories and explanations propounded by men 
 who are noted for their industrious accumulation 
 of facts naturally have great weight. At the same 
 time I would venture to warn amateurs against 
 these writers, because, more than anything, they 
 tend, by advancing small material and superficial 
 explanations of phenomena, to degrade the subject 
 they deal with and rob it of all genuine, because of 
 all human, interest. 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 In a sketch of the whole process of change from 
 classical to mediaeval modes of thought, the reader 
 can do no better than study Mr. Henry Osborn 
 Taylor's ^^ Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages." 
 It is worth its weight in gold, and when he has read 
 
 340 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 it through once it will be well k)r him, instead of 
 seeking some other authority, to read it through again . 
 Professor Mahaffy's "Greek Life and Thought," 
 and his two other books, "The Silver Age" and 
 " Progress of Hellenism," are lively and vigorous, 
 though they sometimes strike one as having more 
 energy than insight. Then there is Seignobo's dry 
 but comprehensive " History of Mediaeval Civilisa- 
 tion," which has been translated, and Souttar's 
 "History of Mediaeval Peoples." With regard to 
 the Renaissance it is extremely difficult to advise. 
 There is, of course, J. A. Symonds* History, and 
 Miintz's " Histoire de I'art pendant la Renaissance," 
 and " Pr^curseurs de la Renaissance ; " also Miche- 
 let's seventh volume. On the subject of sculpture, 
 Perkin's " Italian Sculpture," "Tuscan Sculpture," 
 and " Handbook of Italian Sculpture " contain 
 ample information. Herr Bode's " Florentine Sculp- 
 tors " should be read, and Lord Balcarres' recent 
 work, "The Evolution of Italian Sculpture." I 
 must also mention Professor Villari's book on the 
 same subject, though I have not yet managed to 
 secure it. Of the nature of its treatment I judge 
 only from an extract given by Professor Mahaffy 
 in his "What have the Greeks done for Civilisa- 
 tion." I will quote a line or two from that extract : 
 " The Greeks had no means of expressing Christian 
 spirit or emotion. Their quest was for outward 
 beauty of form, and their nature, being simpler, 
 more spontaneous, and more harmonious than 
 ours, could be adequately expressed in marble. 
 They had no experience of the mental maladies, 
 the tortures of remorse, or the whole inner life 
 created by Christianity. ... In Donatello's day 
 all things were changed ; the faculties of the 
 human mind had been altered and multiplied. 
 Therefore a new art was needed to represent the 
 new inner life. Assuredly Christ and the Virgin 
 cannot be chiselled in the same way as a Venus or 
 
THE WORKS OF MAN 
 
 an Apollo. Outward beauty was no longer the sole 
 aim of art. It was now bound to express character, 
 which is the mind's outward form. Even the very 
 soul of man, with all its load of new struggles, sorrows, 
 and uncertainties, must show through the envelope of 
 marble." The reader will see how close this is to the 
 line of thought I have attempted to suggest myself. 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 With regard to the historical aspect of the Renais- 
 sance the same books apply as have been already 
 mentioned. For painting, Crowe and Cavalcaselle's 
 great work, in the last edition by Mr. Hutton, will 
 sufficiently map out the whole subject ; but I would 
 advise that this rather dry narrative be inspired and 
 animated from time to time by infusions of Ruskin. 
 Out of the multitude of modern critical works I 
 will select those only of Mr. Berenson, whose short 
 studies of the Italian schools are illuminating because 
 they deal with large ideas applied with weight and a 
 subtle power of analysis. 
 
 I am very conscious of the slight and sketchy 
 nature of this chapter of mine, but I have not time 
 to work it up and fortify it. The reason it is allowed 
 to stand is that, though loosely outlined, the idea it 
 conveys of the hand-in-hand purpose of art and 
 intellect through the Renaissance is, I think, a true 
 one and not unimportant. 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 As usual the indispensable clue to the right appre- 
 ciation of French eighteenth-century art is the 
 understanding of the life out of which it grew. It 
 is extremely difficult to realise that life. Artificiality, 
 convention, and vestiges of an old etiquette still 
 survive among us ; but it has long, p2:haps always 
 been a tradition of English life, however socially 
 
 34^ 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 exalted, that it must not be wholly divorced from 
 useful purpose. The life of the ancien rigimey 
 therefore, a life in which etiquette and convention 
 had become the dominant factors, is remote from our 
 sympathy, and the ideas which animated that life are 
 not readily intelligible to us. The best way to render 
 them intelligible is to read some of the memoirs, 
 diaries and letters of the day, of which there is an 
 endless supply. " La noblesse en France avant et 
 depuis 1789," par H. de Barth^lemy; " La Reine Marie 
 Antoinette," par Pierre de Nolhac ; " Le mariage de 
 Louis Quinze d'apr^s des documents nouveaux et 
 une correspondance inddit," par Henry Gauthier- 
 Villars ; the memoirs of the Duo de Luynes, memoirs 
 of Saint-Simon and of Marmontel, also Michelet's 
 History, Sainte-Beuve's " Portraits," and Lord 
 Morley's " Life of Diderot " are some of the books I 
 have made use of ; but the choice is unlimited. Of 
 books on furniture and decoration there is also a 
 quite unlimited supply. As a matter of fact, how- 
 ever, the reader will find H. Havard's " Dictionnaire 
 de I'Ameublement et de la Decoration" and "Arts 
 de I'Ameublement ". quite sufficient for all needs. 
 What is of infinitely more value than any number of 
 books is a collection of the stuff itself. Let us read 
 up about the life of that age until we catch its 
 point of view, then let us go to Hertford House 
 and stand in a complete environment of the art and 
 craftsmanship of that day. Thus shall we best 
 realise eighteenth-century art as the expression 
 of eighteenth-century life. 
 
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