everything which it is possible to regard as distortion, unnaturalness, or stiffness in the plant-forms is fundamentally to be considered as a transformation adapted to the requirements of what is genuinely architectural. In some such way in the column the real art of building passes from that which is purely organic imitation to the definite purpose of scientific rule, and from this to a position which again approximates to the organic result. We find it necessary to draw attention to this twofold point of departure from the actual necessities and the purposeless self-subsistency of architecture, because the true type unites both principles. The beautiful column originates in the natural form, which is then transformed into the post, that is, it submits to the uniformity and scientific precision of form. CHAPTER II CLASSICAL ARCHITECTURE The art of building, when it has attained the position peculiarly its own and adequate to its notional content is subservient in its products to an end, and a significance which it does not itself essentially possess. It becomes an inorganic environment, a whole that is co-ordinated and built conformably to the laws of gravity, whose configurations are subject to that which is severely regular, straight, rectangular, circular, the relations of definite number and quantity, that which is essentially limited measure and strict conformity to rule. Its beauty consists in this very relation to purpose, which, in its freedom from direct[75] admixture with what is organic, spiritual, and symbolical, and despite the fact that it subserves an end, nevertheless combines in an essentially exclusive totality, which suffers its own aim to appear through all its modifications, and in the harmonious co-ordination of its relations clothes that which is purely adapted to purpose in the forms of beauty. Architecture, however, at this stage[76] corresponds to its real notion, for the reason that it is not in a position to endow that which is in the most explicit sense spiritual with a fully adequate existence, and is consequently only able to inform what is external and devoid of spirit in its contrasted appearance with that which is spiritual. We propose, in our consideration of this art of building, in which the relation of service is as truly a characteristic as that of beauty, to adopt the following course of argument. In the _first_ instance we have to establish the _general notion_ and character of the same. _Secondly_, we shall have to adduce the _particular_ fundamental determinants of the architectonic types which are deducible from the ulterior purpose which the classical work of art is erected to subserve. _Thirdly_, we propose to survey the concrete reality which results from the development of classical architecture.