A History of Architecture in all Countries, Volume 1, 3rd ed.: From the Earliest Times to the Present DayFergusson, James
History
A History of Architecture in all Countries, Volume 1, 3rd ed.: From the Earliest Times to the Present Day
Fergusson, James
Architecture -- History
In addition to this, the immaterial nature of their faith has always
deprived the Aryan races of the principal incentive to architectural
magnificence.[20] The Turanian and Celtic races always have the most
implicit faith in ceremonial worship and in the necessity of
architectural splendour as its indispensable accompaniment. On the other
hand, the more practical Aryan can never be brought to understand that
prayer is either more sincere or is more acceptable in one form of house
than in any other. He does not feel that virtue can be increased or vice
exterminated by the number of bricks or stones that may be heaped on one
another, or the form in which they may be placed; nor will his
conception of the Deity admit of supposing that He can be propitiated by
palaces or halls erected in honour of Him, or that a building in the
Middle Pointed Gothic is more acceptable than one in the Classic or any
other style.
This want of faith may be reasonable, but it is fatal to poetry in Art,
and, it is feared, will prevent the Aryans from attaining more
excellence in Architectural Art at the present time than they have done
in former ages.
It is also true that the people are singularly deficient in their
appreciation of colours. Not that actual colour-blindness is more common
with them than with other races, but the harmony of tints is unknown to
them. Some may learn, but none feel it; it is a matter of memory and an
exercise of intellect, but no more. So, too, with form. Other—even
savage—races cannot go wrong in this respect. If the Aryan is successful
in art, it is generally in consequence of education, not from feeling;
and, like all that is not innate in man, it yields only a secondary
gratification, and fails to impress his brother man, or to be a real
work of Art.
From these causes the ancient Aryans never erected a single building in
India when they were pure, nor in that part of India which they
colonised even after their blood became mixed; and we do not now know
what their style was or is, though the whole of that part of the
peninsula occupied by the Turanians, or to which their influence ever
extended, is, and always was, covered by buildings, vast in extent and
wonderful from their elaboration. This, probably, also is the true cause
of the decline of Architecture and other arts in Europe and in the rest
of the modern world. Wherever the Aryans appear Art flies before them,
and where their influence extends utilitarian practical common sense is
assumed to be all that man should aim at. It may be so, but it is sad to
think that beauty cannot be combined with sense.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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