The problem of taste is to study the methods of their appeal and the modes of our response; and to study them with an attention undiverted by the Romantic, Ethical, Mechanical, Biological or Academic Fallacies of the impatiently concluding mind.

CHAPTER VIII

HUMANIST VALUES

I

ARCHITECTURE, simply and immediately perceived, is a combination, revealed through light and shade, of spaces, of masses, and of lines. These few elements make the core of architectural experience: an experience which the literary fancy, the historical imagination, the casuistry of conscience and the calculations of science, cannot constitute or determine, though they may encircle and enrich. How great a chaos must ensue when our judgments of architecture are based upon these secondary and encircling interests the previous chapters have suggested, and the present state of architecture might confirm. It remains to be seen how far these central elements-these spaces, masses and lines-can provide a ground for our criticism that is adequate or secure.

The spaces, masses and lines of architecture, as perceived, are appearances. We may infer from them further facts about a building which are not perceived; facts about construction, facts about history

or society. But the art of architecture is concerned with their immediate aspect; it is concerned with them as appearances.

And these appearances are related to human functions. Through these spaces we can conceive ourselves to move; these masses are capable, like ourselves, of pressure and resistance; these lines, should we follow or describe them, might be our path and our gesture.

Conceive for a moment a 'top-heavy' building or an ill-proportioned' space. No doubt the degree to which these qualities will be found offensive will vary with the spectator's sensibility to architecture; but sooner or later, if the top-heaviness or the disproportion is sufficiently pronounced, every spectator will judge that the building or the space is ugly, and experience a certain discomfort from their presence. So much will be conceded.

Now what is the cause of this discomfort? It is often suggested that the top-heavy building and the cramped space are ugly because they suggest the idea of instability, the idea of collapse, the idea of restriction, and so forth. But these ideas are not in themselves disagreeable. We read the definition of such words in a dictionary with equanimity, yet the definition, if it is a true one, will have conveyed the idea of restriction or collapse. Poetry will convey the ideas with vividness. Yet we experience from it no shadow of discomfort. On the contrary, Hamlet's

cabined, cribbed, confined' delights us, for the very

reason that the idea is vividly conveyed. Nor does Samson painfully trouble our peace, when

'Those two massie Pillars

With horrible convulsion to and fro

He tugged, he shook, till down they came and drew
The whole roof after them with burst of thunder
Upon the heads of all who sate beneath.'

Clearly, then, our discomfort in the presence of such architecture cannot spring merely from the idea of restriction or instability.

But neither does it derive from an actual weakness or restriction in our immediate experience. It is disagreeable to have our movements thwarted, to lose strength or to collapse; but a room fifty feet square and seven feet high does not restrict our actual movements, and the sight of a granite building raised (apparently) on a glass shop-front does not cause us to collapse.

There is instability-or the appearance of it; but it is in the building. There is discomfort, but it is in ourselves. What then has occurred? The conclusion seems evident. The concrete spectacle has done what the mere idea could not: it has stirred our physical memory. It has awakened in us, not indeed an actual state of instability or of being overloaded, but that condition of spirit which in the past has belonged to our actual experiences of weakness,

of thwarted effort or incipient collapse. We have looked at the building and identified ourselves with We have transcribed ourselves into

its apparent state.

terms of architecture.

But the states' in architecture with which we thus identify ourselves need not be actual. The actual pressures of a spire are downward; yet no one speaks of a 'sinking' spire. A spire, when well designed, appears-as common language testifiesto soar. We identify ourselves, not with its actual downward pressure, but its apparent upward impulse. So, too, by the same excellent-because unconscioustestimony of speech, arches 'spring,' vistas 'stretch,' domes 'swell,' Greek temples are ' calm,' and baroque façades restless.' The whole of architecture is, in fact, unconsciously invested by us with human movement and human moods. Here, then, is a principle complementary to the one just stated. We transcribe architecture into terms of ourselves.

This is the humanism of architecture. The tendency to project the image of our functions into concrete forms is the basis, for architecture, of creative design. The tendency to recognise, in concrete forms, the image of those functions is the true basis, in its turn, of critical appreciation.1

The theory of æsthetic here implied, is, needless to say, not new. It was first developed by Lipps twenty years ago, and since then has been constantly discussed and frequently misunderstood.

In what follows I owe a debt to many suggestive points in Mr.