CHAPTER EIGHT: ARCHITECTURAL SELFISHNESS
AND THE CONSECRATION OF PROPERTY
The elevation is to a building what the
countenance is to the mind. T.L. Donaldson, Architectural Maxims, London 1947, XLIII.
Introduction
How
can a building be selfish? In this chapter it will be argued that the endowment
of moral qualities to inanimate objects such as buildings is philosophically
dependent on an analogy with the concept of property. The possibility of
architecture assuming character will
be shown to depend on an extension of the philosophical justification of
ownership. This relates buildings to the mechanics of civilisation as
formulated by David Hume. The chapter will end with a discussion about the
social implications of the moral behaviour of architecture.
Hylozoic stones: how alive is a building?
How
is it possible for a building to be selfish or polite? Surely a building is not
capable of moral behaviour? In his Enquiry
Concerning the Principles of Morals David Hume had written expressly not to
confuse the inanimate with the living when referring to moral behaviour:
We ought not to imagine, because an
inanimate object may be useful as well as a man, that therefore it ought also,
according to this system, to merit the appellation of virtuous.[1]
By
logical extension, Hume appears to be saying that architecture cannot be selfish.
That would directly contradict Garbett's position. In Garbett's system,
however, architecture is never seen as a thing by itself. A building is always
seen as a product made by man or as an object owned by man. There is a
necessary relation between a building and the people involved with it in some
way or another. It is because of this relation that a building cannot be seen
as inanimate, a fact confirmed by Garbett who repeatedly refers to buildings as
organisms. The relation between a building and humanity is informed by the
concept of ownership. Character in architecture is only possible because
buildings are owned by people.
Property, Hume argues is not a
natural thing. The act of appropriation is akin to an act of consecration.
Objects or things become someone's property by way of a ritualistic
pronouncement, such as: this is mine. Such
a pronouncement is enough to make the thing referred to sacred and make people
behave in a particular way with regard to it. In other words ownership is a form
of magic.
[2] An object or
thing can be owned in two ways. It can be owned in a material sense and in an
intellectual sense. In both ways the object is seen as an extension of the
owner; it becomes part of his substance in the same way that the author of the book
of Job talked of Job's substance being seven
thousand sheep...and a very great household (Job I,3) Whether it is
intellectual property, in the form of a design of a building, or material
property, in the form of a house, the concept of property presupposes some form
of sympathy or connection between the owner and the object which makes others
behave in a way appropriate to that concept and makes them equate the two,
regardless of any pre-existing similarity.
With regard to a building, material
ownership and intellectual ownership cannot be distinguished with ease. The
material owner of a house is to a large extent also the intellectual owner of a
building. He may not have been responsible for the original design, but he has
infected the building with his presence to such an extent that his presence is
perceptible in the condition of the building. Indeed Garbett was conscious of
this when he talked of the styleformers as not necessarily the designers of
buildings but those who have affected the
style by whatever means, even mere proximity. [3]
With intellectual property the
sympathy between the object and its maker is very direct. Man creates in his
image, which means that he creates in the image of his personal experience. The
act of consecration by which a designer or a patron owns a building, sets that
building apart within society, makes it an object of special significance,
endowed with meaning about the mind that resides within. The owner can not fail
to stamp his mind on what he owns, cannot fail to endow his
intellectual/material property with the signatures of his ownership.
Architecture is able to express character, therefore, through a process of
metastasis. Even though the product is inanimate, it may be labelled as virtuous
or vicious in the sense that the product is an extension or an impress of the
(intellectual) owner, the person (or persons) whose mind was responsible for
its form and condition. That could be the architect, the patron, the builder or
a combination of all three.
How would Hume have responded to
this? We do not know. He probably would have dismissed it impatiently with a
stroke of the tongue. Garbett, on the other hand, offers a detailed
physiological explanation which allows inanimate matter to participate in
certain aspects of life on just those conditions.
The physiology of architectural character
Seeing,
writes Garbett, is a special way of feeling. Taste is an internal sense which
is able to make judgements about beauty. The feeling which forces taste to make that judgement
constitutes a state of mind where reason and habit converge. Habit allows a
particular sequence of reasoning to be abbreviated into a feeling.
[4]
In other words a feeling is nothing more than a pattern of causes and effects
which is familiar to the brain. The internal sense of beauty, or Taste, which
is the name for this process of abbreviation, is a conditioned reflex which
varies according to the circumstances and objects presented to it through the
organs of sense. Those variations allow the different possible judgements about
whether a certain object is pleasing or displeasing.
The mind can only perceive and judge
upon that which is in some way analogous to itself, that which corresponds to
its own structure:
...if it be the mind
that sees, -the mind that is pleased with a fine building, or displeased with
the reverse, -how can it be pleased or displeased with any qualities but mental
ones?
[5]
A
building in order to be found pleasing or displeasing must be animated with mental qualities. Specific
mental qualities have to be equated to specific forms. Garbett tries to do this
by humanising nature. After all nature, in his attitude to it, is there to
serve humanity. As such nature is seen as a language of anthropocentric symbols
in which every form becomes expressive of some (moral) quality informing human
behaviour. A building is able to express selfishness by finding a word, that is an icon for selfishness
in nature:
..from the world
sustaining sun down to the little busy world enlarging coral-line, nothing
appears to belong to itself, with the sole exception of the oyster [shut up in
the narrowness of its shell, pushing forth excrescences wherever its internal
purposes suggest, without appearing to know that there is a world outside] -a
marvellous anomaly, which may possibly be required to complete nature's great
system of symbol-teaching, her universal language, which, without this, would
have no word for selfishness.
[6]
The
oyster here represents an allegorical instrument, an intermediate stage between
architecture and humanity by which architectural form and human behaviour are
metaphorically linked. What is particularly interesting in this context is the
use of the word excrescence. Certainly it denotes Garbett's attraction to scatological
metaphors. At the same time it does more than that; the word excrescence, with which he characterises
the drainage-pipes "inexplicably" emerging from the rear facades of
London houses, and the word orifice which he uses to describe whatever hole a
facade presents to the outside world, enliven the building. Such metaphors make
it possible to talk of buildings as one does of human beings. The excrescence
and the orifice, when there is no locomotive movement, constitute immediate
evidence of life. Some everyday and necessary habits of human beings become
revolting as soon as they are made public. The exterior of buildings are public
by their very nature. When they are enlivened through analogy to human digestive
processes, their excretions necessarily also become revolting.
[7]
Two
analogies confront each other here and re-enforce a building's moral duties.
The first enlivens the building in its role as extension of the owner. The
second analogy belongs to the psychology of associationism and invokes a more
general anthropomorphism which then fuses with, and complements the first.
Inanimate matter is imbued with the power of expression through resemblances
between the object and the viewing subject's physiognomical experience.
Experience of the world in which we live has supplied us with physiognomical
insight. This insight is used to build up expectations with reference to
particular forms and relate them to our needs, fears and desires. That
experience is used when designing buildings. A building becomes the intended
expression of a designer's view of the world related to specific social,
intellectual, political and economic aspirations:
How can tangible objects
affect [the mind] except by retaining the impress of mind...It is not the
building we condemn but the mind that appears in it, -not the design but the
spirit that presided over it, and stamped its own character thereon.
[8]
A building participates
in the politics of being; it takes up a position, a pose to help the owner
achieve social standing.
[9]
Architecture becomes a social tool and as such endowed, even if only by
extension, with virtue, or moral beauty.
All this is closely related to another direct source for Garbett's theory
of expression, namely Ruskin. In some of his most inspired prose in "The Lamp of
Life," Ruskin relates the attempt of architecture to be dignified and
pleasurable to the vivid expression of the intellectual life which has been
concerned in its production.
[10]
Ruskin's concepts of frankness and audacity correspond closely to Garbett's
architectural politeness. Ruskin converted social virtues into architectural
ones solely on the basis of the belief that the mind of a man is made visible
in his architecture.
Karl Marx had written that the products of men's hands (...) appear as
independent beings endowed with life.[11]
There lies a significant connection: it is not just inanimate matter that is
being asked to participate in life and being asked to display virtue, it is the
product of man. As Vico said, we can only know what we have made. An artefact
is able to participate in moral life because it is a human product and
functions as an extension of its maker/owner. The producer or the owner endows
the object he produces or owns with his own being.
It is by virtue of that correspondence
between the owner (designer/patron) and his product (the building), that
property becomes subject to the same rules of etiquette to which the owner is
obliged to conform:
The name Architecture
must apply (...) to those buildings which conform to all the rules of a
systemised etiquette.
[12]
Architecture
can not be judged in terms of a-moral or disinterested aesthetic criteria.
Because every building is an extension of mind and because that mind intrudes
into free and neutral space, architecture has to be judged according to its
place within a spectrum of human values. Architecture participates in society.
The
power of expression in Garbett's thinking was physiologically explained by the
association of ideas, more specifically by the ideas of Archibald Alison. Later
in the century associationism would help to evolve the theories of Einfühlung and
empathy by German thinkers such as Robert Vischer and Theodor Lipps which
constitute a more sophisticated explanation of the transmission of mental
qualities through inanimate matter.
[13]
Garbett's theory regarding architectural expression more closely resembles lord
Kames' concept of sympathy, but a definite relation is doubtful. Critically
Garbett's concept of architectural character fell back on a more purely architectural
tradition represented by Blondel's concept of caractère and the architecture
parlante of subsequent French theory. Caractère referred to correspondences
of habit between the object and its functional destination. In a normative
sense, caractère recommended the use of such resemblances as a rhetorical ploy
to raise expectations concerning activities within the building. Associationism
on the other hand attempted to explain the process of thought which make caractère as well as a broader range of
expressions possible. Associationism, as a constative theory of perception, was
not able endow those trains of thought and the resemblances they work on, with
a definite civil purpose or make them subject to duty. That was, however,
precisely Garbett's intention.
The civil use of beauty
All
this still does not explain why the ability of architecture to express the
moral condition of its owner was seized on by Garbett to promote a particular
kind of expression, not just as an aesthetic possibility, but a civil duty. The answer to that is
supplied by Garbett in the form of an analogy between bodily and intellectual
processes:
If it be true of the
body and its senses, (which I believe no physiologist denies,) that they are
pained or offended only by what tends to injure them, may not the continued and
repeated analogies observed between the material worlds and immaterial worlds
lead us to suspect a similar law regarding the mind? The inference seems as fair
as any that depends only on analogy.
[14]
If
a sharp object can hurt the body, why should not an ugly object hurt the mind?
Ugliness is a cause of spiritual and mental pain:
If, as all admit, it is the mind alone,
that sees, tastes, feels, likes and dislikes objects of art or taste, are not
these self-preservative antipathies of the mind to be respected, as well as
those of the body? does not this become a matter not of refinement and luxury,
but of interest and DUTY? Are not ugly objects to be withdrawn as inflicting
mental injuries, just the same as a nuisance, a noise, or a stench, which
is known to be injurious to the body, because unpleasant? (...) Habit
counteracts and renders us insensible to the unpleasantness, but not the
injury. Who then shall dare to guess the difference in mental health,
between a people living surrounded and immersed in objects of bad taste, or in
objects of good taste, between a people whose works are all utilitarian,
and one whose works are all artistic. These extreme cases, remember are
not imaginary. History has afforded examples of both.
[15]
Such statements
preparing the road to a non-oppressive environment have since become truisms.
They probably gained a wider currency from the concerns that city-life was
generating within the medical profession during the nineteenth century.
[16]
Ruskin had included the promotion of mental health in his definition of
architecture.
[17]
But even though he supplied many of the insights for Garbett's idea of a
morally upright architecture, he had not elaborated the concept of aesthetic
health in that way. It may well have been that Ruskin prompted Garbett to take
a closer look at the problem of the relationship between beauty and health. A
similar remark about the physiological working of ugliness occurs as a tangential
reference in Samuel Ware's Tracts on
Vaults where he writes that an ugly
object is as much a nuisance to one man as a smoky atmosphere is to another.[18]
But any visible contributing factor in the formulation the link between mental
health and architecture must be seen in the wider context of Garbett's obvious
interest in moral philosophy generally.
Beauty and moral well-being have
always in some form or other been connected. In the Platonic-Christian
world-view, beauty is the signature of both truth and goodness. Here that
equation is restated by Rameau's nephew in conversation with Diderot:
The reign of Nature is
quietly coming in, and that of my trinity, against which the gates of hell shall
not prevail: truth, which is the father, begets goodness which is the son,
whence proceeds the beautiful which is the holy ghost
[19]
Although
many architectural theorists had made the connection between architectural
beauty and well-being, none had argued through the connection making the health
of a whole civilisation so deliberately dependent on the expressive powers of
the built environment.
Shaftesbury had introduced beauty as
the signature of civility and so had prepared the concept of a moral sense modelled on the sense of beauty
which was subsequently elaborated in Hutcheson's Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue of
1725. This work was a conscious response to Shaftesbury's ideas. Significantly,
Hutcheson's Inquiry is divided into two treatises of which the
first concerns beauty and the second virtue, thus the rhetorical structure is
made to resemble a division in Hutchesonian metaphysics whereby aesthetics is
prior to ethics.
[20] This sequence is echoed by Garbett in his chain of values in which
so-called lower or physical beauties precede higher moral ones. It is known that
Garbett had studied the works of Hutcheson.
[21]
He may well have been familiar with the passage by Shaftesbury quoted in note
25 below, or other vaguely similar passages in the Characteristicks,
if only through Hutcheson's treatment of them. [22]
The writings of the third Earl of
Shaftesbury (1671-1713) as such constitute an important prelude to Garbett's
ideas. Shaftesbury provides the basic arguments for Garbett to do away with a
sharp division between beauty and the supposedly practical sides of the
Vitruvian triad. Influenced as he was by the Cambridge Platonists, Shaftesbury
reinforces the necessity of including beauty in moral life, of consciously
joining utility and beauty in what he dubs as the polite![23]
Politeness, for Shaftesbury is an
equivalent for civilised society. It means a studied demeanour, a conscious
moral stand represented by an acquired pose which is, through the philosophical
working of the rituals of property, antecedent to Garbett's architectural politeness.
At the same time politeness refers back to Cicero's (and Vitruvius') concept of
Decorum. The passage quoted at some length in note 25 from his Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions,
Times
displays the exact anatomy of that synthesis between beauty and moral behaviour,
its consequent reciprocation and its natural model: physical health. Moral
health and physical health go hand in hand, just as beauty and goodness are two
sides of the same coin. The philosophical cohabitation of moral and physical
health had been made possible through the equivalence of ugliness and pain,
beauty and pleasure.
[24]
Shaftesbury's concept of politeness
is a logical consequence of the moral development of the Socratic maxim
concerning beauty and function. Things not only become beautiful when they are
functional; symmetry and just proportion are not just tests of function; the
equation is reversible: Beauty in architecture has itself become a necessary
function, as basic as, say, stability. Beauty in architecture not only denotes
the physical as well as the moral health of society, of the builder, of the
owner of whomever has managed to stamp his mind upon the building, but is itself also an instrument of health.
The effects of ignoring such connections are described in a passage which
echoes Alberti:
And will any one dare to say that this
courtesy is useless? writes Garbett, Will any one dare affirm, for instance, that when the fearful cry of
"Guerre au Chateau, paix a la chaumiere," arose from misguided
millions, there was no difference observed between the mild, pleasant-fronted
chateau,-which though embattled did not frown, but by its benign expression
seemed the protector of the surrounding cottages, and by its symmetry and
regular features resembled an organism of nature, not its own, but belonging to
the surrounding scene,-and the rude heap of excrescences which, oyster-like,
"concentrated all in self." bore no apparent relation to any thing
without, but instantly turned its back on the beholder, (every side being in
fact a back), and said as plainly as forms could speak, "Stand off, noli
mi tangere; I care not a straw for you; I have nothing in common with such a
vulgar herd?" I doubt not that, had many buildings of this last
description then existed in France (unfortunately there were few, or none),
they would have done good service by bearing the brunt of the storm, and saving
some of their more courteous neighbours.[25]
A
building is not alive, but it participates in the life of its owner. It is
endowed with certain qualities that pertain to the living. Those qualities
address themselves to the moral sense. At the same time, as we have seen from
the passage just quoted it is a political instrument, essential to the organic
conservatism as advocated by Burke and obviously supported by Garbett. The
powerful must operate the politics of fear at their own peril, but as far as
Garbett is concerned, their conservatism would be better served by benevolence.
Hume's society: benevolence as an extreme
virtue
The
mind can only perceive selfishness in inanimate objects by analogy to itself,
that is, by analogy to animate and moral beings capable of want and desire. For
a building to be perceived as selfish or polite the concept of architecture
requires a philosophical substructure based on a concept of society as a
cohesive force to deal with want.
Hume's Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals has a
chapter entitled "Why utility pleases".
[26]
The argument leading up to this chapter assumes that the underlying principle
of political society is the idea of utility. Usefulness is the only binding and
motive principle in society. Society is a cohesive force which exists because
there is want. Society is useful to its participants in that it regulates the
production and distribution of useful items such as food, shelter etc.
Few enjoyments,
writes Hume, are given us from the open
and liberal hand of nature; but by art, labour and industry, we can extract
them in great abundance. Hence the ideas of property become necessary in all civil
society.[27]
The
act of consecration which designates property also provokes moral conduct. In a
world where there is natural abundance, there would be no need of property. In
a world which was totally evil, the concept of property would be irrelevant. In
this world however, where want is rife, but where abundance can be worked for,
it is useful to have property and
therefore there is a consequent need for the idea of justice. The concept of
justice regulates property. Law upholds justice by prescribing a code of
behaviour with regard to property. Law determines the relationship between the
individual and society generally and keeps the balance between personal
interest and the collective interest. That is also the reason why we have humanity or a fellow feeling
with others. It is simply because it is useful to
self-preservation. [28]
Benevolence which services the
relationship between the individual and society is not merely a virtue, it is
to a differing degree in every person, an instinct. Its primary ingredient is
usefulness to self and to society; it
is the single most effective medium of a symbiotic relationship between the
two. Utility pleases because it promotes a good. Benevolence is specifically
concerned with promoting a greater good. All the other virtues are subject to
corruption when taken to an extreme, all that is, except benevolence, there is
no limit to the promotion of good. It is the ultimate manifestation of utility.
Each of the elements introduced by Hume can now be recognised in Garbett's icon
of a beautiful architecture as a socially useful architecture:
A building devoid of
architecture displeases all who see it, (...) because they see and feel that it
benefits its owner at their expense.
[29]
Vitruvius'
concept of utility has by Garbett been extended to incorporate architectural
beauty. Law and architectural theory have to an uncanny extent become
indistinguishable in a society in which utility is the binding force towards a
civilised progress. Justice lies at the very basis of the process of
civilisation forcing everything to coagulate into a symbiotic process of
domestication by appropriation. Justice represents a sort of moral gravity by
which everything assembles into complex relations of ownership. To improve the
world it is necessary to progress towards an extreme benevolence. Benevolence
is the single most effective moving power of the process of civilisation. As it
is the idea of property which makes architecture partake in moral society; and
as a building is, by nature and in the first instance, a necessary obstacle to
society, then that property must, in order to further civilisation, be
benevolent. A building must express the benevolence of the owner within.
Emerson's use of the word selfishness with regard to great mechanical works,
should now be quoted in full:
Is not the selfish and even cruel aspect
which belong to our great mechanical works -to mills, railways, and machinery-
the effect of the mercenary impulses which these works obey. When its errands
are noble and adequate, a steamboat bridging the Atlantic between Old and New
England, and arriving at its ports with the punctuality of a planet, is a step
of man into harmony with nature (...) When science is learned in love, and its
powers are wielded by love, they will appear the supplements and continuations
of the material creation.
It
is the mercenary impulses which are at fault. The cure for architectural
selfishness is the broadening out of these impulses to secure a personal good
which does not deny, but actively proclaims a greater good. Therefore, as far
as Garbett is concerned, the building is to transmit the thought and consideration which an owner must feel with regard to
society as a whole.
The negative art of politeness
Politeness
is in that sense a negative art, as it consists not in aiming at a positive good, but at avoiding a positive evil.[30]
It aims to neutralise Schopenhauer's obstacle and to allow once more the free
flow of painlessness. As long as men are men they will not be pampered by
courtesy but exasperated at the lack of it, provoked by the idea that a great
building will benefit none but its owner. Politeness is a first step in a
benevolent attitude, whereby a pose is assumed which affects a concern for the
spectator and society as a whole in fact whereby the building no longer
expresses the owner's character in the raw but moulds him to the obligations of
society.
The moral maze
This
immediately draws architecture further and further into the maze which is moral
life and its dubious system of classification into, for example, genuine and
affected poses. Garbett is forced to take the prescription of a moral
architecture deeper and deeper into a resemblance with human behaviour
similarly making a distinction between a natural
politeness and an artificial
politeness in architecture.
The problems inherent in Garbett's
proposition for an architectural politeness have now fully surfaced. It is not
architecture which has to improve but the owners' whole substance, including
his home and his institutions. Greenough intelligently replied to Garbett's
plea for politeness in architecture, saying that, quite simply, man was
selfish:
Mr. Garbett, in his learned and able
treatise on the principles of design in architecture, has dissected the English
house and found with the light of two words, fallen from Mr. Emerson, the
secret of the inherent ugliness of that structure. It is the cruelty and
selfishness of
a London House, he says (and I think he proves it too), which affects us so
disagreeably as we look upon it. Now, these qualities in a house, like the
blear-eyed stolidity of a habitual sot, are symptoms, not diseases. Mr. Garbett
should see herein the marvellous expression of which bricks and mortar can be
made the vehicles. In vain he will attempt to get by embellishment a denial of
selfishness, so long as selfishness reigns. To medicate the symptoms will never,
at best do more than affect a metastasis -suppress an eruption.
[31]
Greenough
has hit the bull's eye with regard to Garbett's morality and by extension to
that of Ruskin and many architectural moralists, in that it is rarely
architecture they are trying to improve but humanity in general. It is for this
reason that both Garbett and Ruskin eventually put aside their concern for
architecture and went in search of a more direct involvement for society,
involving themselves in all sorts of utopian and socialist schemes. The
ingredients for that recipe were first brought together in their art-theories.
Garbett's architectural theory is in essence really a moral philosophy.
Rather
than emphasising the influence of moral philosophy and the theory of law, the
moral demands Garbett makes on architecture should, perhaps, have been
interpreted against the insistent background of contemporary evangelicalism
which preached that everything should shout for the betterment of our
consciences and so for the improvement of society in general. The Treatise propounds an architectural equivalent of
common morality which says that to improve mankind one must begin by oneself,
automatically relating the steps of man to the steps of mankind. Buildings in
order participate in the process of civilisation must help to eradicate a
destructive, isolating selfishness as symbolised by the egocentric view of the
oyster, and promote instead a more subtle and long-term form of self-interest
which is embodied in the concept of society and civilisation. That refined
self-love resides in benevolence which is based on a utilitarian conception of
the relationship between the individual and society.
[32] Buildings in that relationship have to appear polite, paying tribute,
not solely to the riches and power of the owner and his exclusive concern for
his own well-being but using his riches to greater effect in an act of
benevolence towards the environment as a whole. That is how the individual and
the mass become interdependent aspects of the same process of
civilisation.
[33]
3.
Treatise, p. 251. on the issue of identity
cf. Snelder & Bakker (1971) p. 2.1 ff. I would like to take this
opportunity to thank mr. Snelder for pointing out De Levita (1965) pp. 29
ff and William James (1890) pp. 291 ff.
4.
Seeing,
he writes, ...means a train of reasoning
which the mind, by frequent repetition, has acquired the habit of performing so
rapidly, or rather with so much abbreviation and omission of intermediate
steps, that it cannot follow itself, (...) but arrives at the conclusion that
the object is pleasing or displeasing. Treatise,
p. 6-7. Garbett's immediate source for the idea of internal senses even though
it was a widely accepted form of explanation at the time is Frances Hutcheson.
The appropriate instrument for perceiving the sense of beauty and the moral
sense is "the mind's eye," a tool which Garbett makes eager use of.
cf. Kivy (1976) pp. 12 f. On Hutcheson's use of the word Sense see Kivy (1976)
pp. 22-42. Garbett quotes two lines of poetry the author of which,
infuriatingly, I have not been able to trace: It is the mind that sees; the outward eyes; Present the object but the
mind descries.
7.
The Londoner, in whatever
quarter residing, from Bermondsey to Belgravia, has only to look out of his
back window....His view will be bounded by tall thin walls, or rather screens,
apparently only half a brick thick, and showing no intention of being connected
with roofed buildings. They are spotted all over, neither regularly nor
irregularly, with square glazed holes, seemingly broken through after they were
built, and are edged at the top with a narrow line of stone, above which, the
tops of certain roofs occasionally, but rarely betray their presence; while
below it, at every interval of about twenty feet, appears a gaping wound ready
to discharge something (it is not apparent what) into a funnel and long pipe,
the clumsy attachment of which to the wall renders it evident that the use of
these additions was unknown by those who erected it. Equally unforeseen were
the improvements which rise from behind this screen, and break the sky-line
with a hundred grotesque bodies of red clay and blackened metal, in varied
forms of ugliness, and nodding to each other in a way that makes their
equilibrium seem as precarious and unaccountable as that of the tall brick
screen itself.
In: Treatise, p. 4.
10.
..things in other respects
alike, as in their substance, or uses, or outward forms, are noble or ignoble
in proportion to the fullness of life which either they themselves enjoy, or of
whose action they bear the evidence. (...) And this is especially true of all
objects which bear upon them the impress of the highest order of creative life,
that is to say, of the mind of man: they become noble or ignoble in proportion
to the amount of energy of that mind which has visibly been employed upon them.
But most peculiarly and imperatively does the rule hold with respect to the
creations of Architecture, which being properly capable of no other life than
this, and being not essentially composed of things pleasant in themselves, as
music of sweet sounds, or painting of fair colours, but of inert
substance,-depend, for their dignity and pleasurableness in the utmost degree,
upon the vivid expression of the intellectual life which has been concerned in
their production. Ruskin, Seven Lamps, "Lamp
of Life," § I-II, pp. 175-176 Afterwards follows the beautiful passage in
which the life of a society and of man is compared to a stream of lava slowly
freezing up into immobility and stagnation.
11.
Karl Marx, Capital, Oxford,
1974, vol. i, p. 77. The quotation was
brought to my attention on reading Ludmilla Jordanova's essay "Objects of
Knowledge: A Historical Perspective of Museums," in The New Museology, ed. Peter Vergo, London 1989, p. 38.
13.
Michael Podro (1982) pp. 100-103 & 176. The problem that is being
grappled with is comparable to the one which Wölfflin posed at the beginning of
his career, namely how architecture is the expression of an état d'âme. Hegel
had conjoined content and form, making art the expression of a particular
metaphysics developing in time. That would be a fair judgement of Garbett's,
and Ruskin's view of the interaction between mind and architecture. Garbett's
position with regard to these, however, throws him well back into the
eighteenth century. The Germans made use of a more sophisticated empirical
psychology than Garbett at that time had access to and based themselves on an
understanding of Kantian aesthetics which he did not pretend to. On the
relation between Empathy, or Einfühlung and associationism cf.
"Empathy," Dict. Hist. of Ideas,
II, p. 88.
20.
The full title, both exhibits his respect for Shaftesbury as well as
his taking up the challenge made by Locke to introduce a mathematics of
morality: An Inquiry into the Original of
Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue; in Two Treatises, In Which the Principles of
the Late Earl of Shaftesbury Are Explain'd and Defended, Against the Author of
the "Fable of the Bees" and the Ideas of Moral Good and Evil Are
Established, According to the Sentiments of the Antient Moralists. With an
Attempt to Introduce a Mathematical Calculation in Subjects of Morality,
London 1725.
24.
Addressing the grown youth of our polite World, he writes:...let the appeal be to these whose Relish
is retrievable, and whose Taste may yet be formed in Morals; as
it seems to be, already, in exteriour Manners and Behaviour. That
there is really a STANDARD of this latter kind, will immediately, and on the
first view, be acknowledg'd. The Contest is only, "Which is right:-Which
the unaffected Carriage, and Just Demeanour? And Which the affected
and false?" (...) There are few so affectedly clownish, as
absolutely to disown Good-breeding, and renounce the NOTION OF A BEAUTY
in outward Manners and Deportment. With such as these, (...) I
cou'd scarce be tempted to bestow the least Pains or Labour, towards convincing
'em of a Beauty in inward Sentiments and Principles. Whoever has
any Impression of what we call Gentility or Politeneß, is already
so acquainted with the DECORUM, and GRACE of things, that he will readily
confess a Pleasure and Enjoyment in the very Survey and Contemplation
of this kind. Now if in the way of polite Pleasure, the Study and Love
of BEAUTY be essential; the Study and Love of SYMMETRY and
ORDER, on which Beauty depends, must also be essential, in the same
respect.'Tis impossible we can advance the least in any Relish or Taste
of outward Symmetry and Order; but we must necessarily acknowledge that the
proportionate and regular State, is the truly prosperous and natural in
every Subject. The same Features which make Deformity, create Incommodiousness
and Disease. And the same Shapes and Proportions which make Beauty afford
Advantage by adapting to Activity and Use. Even in the imitating or designing
Arts (...) the Truth or Beauty of every Figure or Statue is
measur'd from the Perfection of Nature, in her just adapting of every Limb and
Proportion to the Activity, Strength and Dexterity, Life and Vigour of the
particular Species or Animal design'd. Thus Beauty and Truth
are plainly joined with the NOTION of Utility and Convenience,
even in the Apprehension of every ingenious artist, the Architect, the Statuary,
or the Painter. 'Tis the same in the Physician's way. Natural Health
is the just Proportion, Truth, and regular course of things, in a
Constitution. 'Tis the inward beauty of the BODY. And when the Harmony
and just Measures of the rising Pulses, the circulating Humours, and the moving
Airs or Spirits are disturb'd or lost, Deformity enters, and with it Calamity
and Ruin. Shaftesbury (1984) pp. 220-222.
33.
The possibility of interpreting politeness as a Communist approach to
architecture occurred to Garbett as well and it obviously bothered him, at one
point he writes: Is architecture then, it
will be asked, a concession to communism, and a pampering of the worst feelings
of a mob? By no means: if it be so, then is common politeness the same...in: Treatise, p. 9.