I do not, however, propose in discussing any of the above relations to enter into detail, but will limit myself to points of most general significance, a restriction more easy to observe in the present case than it was in that of the symbolical type of building. 1. THE GENERAL CHARACTER OF CLASSICAL ARCHITECTURE (_a_) In conformity with the principle I have already more than once adverted to the fundamental idea of the genuine art of building consists in this, that the spiritual import is not exclusively reposed in the work of construction itself, which by this means becomes an independent symbol of ideal signification[77], but, with the converse result, that this significance secures its free existence outside the limits of architecture. This existence may be of a twofold character, to the extent in other words that another art of extensive range--I refer, above all, to the art of sculpture of the true classical type--sets before us and gives independent form to the significance, or the individual man in himself receives and gives effect to the same in the active verity of his life. Apart from this[78], these two aspects may still appear together. When, therefore, the Oriental architecture of the Babylonians, Hindoos, and Egyptians, on the one hand, gave symbolical form, in images of independent consistency, to that which was reckoned among these people as the absolute and true, or, from another aspect, enclosed, despite its external natural form, that which was conserved after death--in contrast to this what we find now is--whether we regard it relatively to art's activity, or to the life of actual existence--that the spiritual is _separated_ from the work of construction in _independent guise_ for itself, and architecture becomes the _vassal_ of what is spiritual, which constitutes the real significance and the determinating end. This end is consequently predominant. It controls the entire work; it determines the fundamental form of the same no less than its external skeleton, and neither suffers the material nor the individual's imagination and caprice to assert their independence in a self-substantive way, as was the case in symbolical architecture, or to develop, over and beyond the true purpose of the work, a superfluity of manifold parts and configurations, as is the case in the romantic type.