CHAPTER IV

THE MECHANICAL FALLACY

SUCH, in broad outline, were the tendencies, and such, for architecture, the results, of the criticism which drew its inspiration from the Romantic Movement. Very different in its origins, more plausible in its reasoning, but in its issue no less misleading, is the school of theory by which this criticism was succeeded. Not poetry but science, not sentiment but calculation, is now the misleading influence. It was impossible that the epoch of mechanical invention which followed, with singular exactness, the close of the Renaissance tradition, should be without its effect in fixing the point of view from which that tradition was regarded. The fundamental conceptions of the time were themselves dictated by the scientific investigations for which it became distinguished.

Every activity in life, and even the philosophy of life itself, was interpreted by the method which, in one particular field, had proved so fruitful. Every aspect of things which eluded mechanical explanation became disregarded, or was even forced by violence into mechanical terms. For it was an axiom of

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scientific method that, only in so far as phenomena could so be rendered, might any profitable results be expected from their study. To this rule the arts proved no exception. But they were affected by the prevailing theories in two contrary directions. In many minds, æsthetics, like all philosophy, became subordinated to the categories of materialistic and mechanical science. On the other hand, those who valued art tended more and more to claim for each art its separate consideration. For, since the essence of the scientific procedure had been the isolation of fields of inquiry-the subjection of each to its own hypothetical treatment-it was natural that the fine arts, also, should withdraw into a sphere of autonomy, and demand exemption from any values but their own. 'Art for art's sake,' for all its ring of æstheticism, was thus, in a sense, a motto typical of the scientific age; and Flaubert, who gave it currency, was an essentially scientific artist. But the fine arts employed their autonomy only to demonstrate their complete subservience to the prevailing scientific preoccupation. Each bowed the knee in a different way. Thus Painting, becoming confessedly impressionistic, concerned itself solely with optical facts, with statements about vision instead of efforts after significance. Literature became realistic, statistical, and documentary. Architecture, founded, as it is, on construction, could be rendered, even more

readily than the rest, in the terms of a purely scientific description; its aims, moreover, could easily be converted into the ideals of the engineer. Where mechanical elements indisputably formed the basis, it was natural to pretend that mechanical results were the goal; especially at a time when, in every field of thought, the nature of value was being more or less confused with the means by which it is produced.

Now, although the movement of thought we have just described was in no way allied to the Romantic, and may even, in a measure, be regarded as a reaction against it, yet one characteristic, at least, the two had in common, and that was an inevitable prejudice against the architecture of the Renaissance. The species of building which the mechanical movement most naturally favoured was the utilitarian-the ingenious bridges, the workshops, the great constructions of triumphant industry, proudly indifferent to form. But, in the 'Battle of the Styles,' as the antithesis between Gothic and Palladian preferences was at that time popularly called, the influences of science reinforced the influences of poetry in giving to the mediæval art a superior prestige. For the Gothic builders were not merely favourites of romance; they had been greatly occupied with the sheer problems of construction. Gothic architecture, strictly speaking, came into existence when the invention of

intermittent buttressing had solved the constructive problem which had puzzled the architects of the north ever since they had set out to vault the Roman basilica. The evolution of the Gothic style had been, one might almost say, the predestined progress of that constructive invention. The climax of its effort, and its literal collapse, at Beauvais, was simply the climax and the collapse of a constructive experiment continuously prolonged. In no architecture in the world had so many features shown a more evidently constructive origin, or retained a more constructive purpose, than in the Gothic. The shafts which clustered so richly in the naves were each a necessary and separate articulation in the structural scheme; dividing themselves into the delicate traceries of the roof, construction is still their controlling aim. The Greek style alone could show a constructive basis as defined; and, for a generation interested in mechanical ingenuity, the Gothic had this advantage over the Greek, that its construction was dynamic rather than static, and, by consequence, at once more daring and more intricate. Thus, Gothic, remote, fanciful, and mysterious, was, at the same time, exact, calculated, and mechanical: the triumph of science no less than the incarnation of romance. In direct contrast with this stood the architecture of the Renaissance. Here was a style which, as we have had subordinated, deliberately and without

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hesitation, constructional fact to æsthetic effect. It had not achieved, it seemed not even to have desired, that these two elements should be made to correspond. Where a constructional form supplied them with an agreeable effect, its architects had not scrupled to employ it, even where it no longer fulfilled a constructive purpose. On the other hand, with equal disregard for this kind of truth, those elements of construction which really and effectively supported the fabric, they were constantly at pains to conceal, and even, in concealing, to contradict. Constructive science, which so long had been the mistress of architecture, they treated as her slave; and not content with making mechanical expedients do their work while giving them no outward recognition, they appropriated the forms of a scientific construction to purely decorative uses, and displayed the cornice and pilaster divorced from all practical significance, like a trophy of victory upon their walls. And, in proportion as the Renaissance matured its forms and came to fuller self-consciousness in its methods, this attitude towards construction, which had already been implicit in the architecture of ancient Rome, with its 'irrational' combination of the arch and lintel, became ever more frank, and one might almost say, ever more insolent. Chains and buttresses in concealment did the work which some imposing, but unsound, dome affected to contribute; façades