A History of Architecture in all Countries, Volume 1, 3rd ed. / From the Earliest Times to the Present Day

by James Fergusson

I.—ETHNOGRAPHY AS APPLIED TO ARCHITECTURAL ART.

Ethnology, though one of the youngest, is perhaps neither the least beautiful nor the least attractive of that fair sisterhood of sciences whose birth has rewarded the patient industry and inflexible love of truth which characterises the philosophy of the present day. It takes up the history of the world at the point where it is left by its elder sister Geology, and, following the same line of argument, strives to reduce to the same scientific mode of expression the apparent chaos of facts which have hitherto been looked upon as inexplicable by the general observer.

It is only within the limits of the present century that Geology was rescued from the dreams of cataclysms and convulsions which formed the staple of the science in the last century; and that step by step, by slow degrees, rocks have been classified and phenomena explained. All that picturesque wildness with which the materials seemed at first sight to be distributed over the world’s surface has been reduced to order, and they now lie arranged as clearly, and as certainly in the mind of a geologist, as if they had been squared by the tool of a mason and placed in order by the hand of a mechanic. So it is with Ethnology. Race has succeeded race;—all have been disturbed, some obliterated—many contorted—and sometimes the older, apparently, superimposed upon the newer. All at first sight is chaos and confusion, and it seems almost hopeless to attempt to unravel the mysteries of the long-forgotten past. It is true nevertheless, in Ethnology, as in the sister science, that no change on the world’s surface has taken place without leaving its mark. A race may be obliterated, or only crop up at the edge of some great basin of population; but it has left its traces either as fossil remains in the shape of buildings or works, or as impressions on language or on the arts of those who supplanted the perishing race. When these are read,—when all the phenomena are gathered together and classified, we find the same perfection of Order, the same beautiful simplicity of law pervading the same complex variety of results, which characterise all the phenomena of nature, and the knowledge of which is the highest reward of intellectual exertion.

Language has hitherto been the great implement of analysis which has been employed to elucidate the affiliation of races; and the present state of the science may be said to be almost entirely due to the acumen and industry of learned linguists. Physiology has lent her aid; but the objects offered for her examination are so few, especially in remote ages, and the individual differences are so small, as compared with the general resemblance, that, in the present state of that science, its aid has not been of the importance which it may fairly be expected hereafter to assume. In both sciences History plays an important part: in Geology, by furnishing analogies without which it would be hardly possible to interpret the facts; in Ethnology, by pointing out the direction in which inquiries should be made, and by guiding and controlling the conclusions which may have been arrived at. With the assistance of these sciences, Ethnologists have accomplished a great deal, and may do more; but Ethnology, based merely on Language[^[16]] and Physiology, is like Geology based only on Mineralogy and Chemistry. Without Palæontology, that science would never have assumed the importance or reached the perfection to which it has now attained; and Ethnology will never take the place which it is really entitled to, till its results are checked, and its conclusions elucidated, by the science of Archæology.

Without the aid and vivifying influence derived from the study of fossil remains, Geology would lose half its value and more than half its interest. It may be interesting to the man of science to know what rock is superimposed upon another, and how and in what relative periods these changes occurred; but it is far more interesting to watch the dawn of life on this globe, and to trace its development into the present teeming stage of existence. So it will be when, with the aid of Archæology, Ethnologists are able to identify the various strata in which mankind have been distributed; to fix identities of race from similarities of Art; and to read the history of the past from the unconscious testimony of material remains. When properly studied and understood, there is no language so clear, or whose testimony is so undoubted, as that of those petrified thoughts and feelings which men have left engraved on the walls of their temples, or buried with them in the chambers of their tombs. Unconsciously expressed, but imperishably written, they are there to this hour. Any one who likes may read, and no one who can translate them can for one moment doubt but that they are the best, and frequently the only, records that remain of bygone races.

It is not difficult to explain why ethnographers have not hitherto considered Archæology of that importance to their researches to which it is undoubtedly entitled. We live in an age when all Art is a chaos of copying and confusion; we are daily masquerading in the costume of every nation of the earth, ancient and modern, and are unable to realise that these dresses in which we deck ourselves were once realities. Because Architecture, since the Reformation in the sixteenth century, has in Europe been a mere hortus siccus of dried specimens of the art of all countries and of all ages, we cannot feel that, before that time, Art was earnest and progressive; and that men then did what they felt to be best and most appropriate, by the same processes by which Nature works. We do not therefore perceive that, though in an infinitely lower grade, we may reason of the works of man before a given date, with the same certainty with which we can reason of those of Nature. When this great fact is once recognised—and it is indisputable—Archæology and Palæontology take their places side by side, as the guiding and vivifying elements in the sister sciences of Ethnology and Geology; and give to each of these a value they could never otherwise attain.

As may well be expected, however, when Archæology is employed to aid in these researches, results are frequently arrived at, which at first sight are discrepant from those to which the study of language alone has hitherto led scientific men. But this is no proof either of the truth or falsehood of the conclusions arrived at, or of the value or worthlessness of the processes employed. Both are essential to the question of knowledge, and it is by a skilful balancing of both classes of evidence that truth is ultimately arrived at.

It would be out of place to attempt in an introduction like the present anything approaching to a complete investigation of this subject. Nor is it necessary. The various ethnographic relations of one style to another will be pointed out as they arise in the course of the narrative, and their influence traced to such an extent as may be necessary to render them intelligible. But for the same reasons which made it expedient to try, in the preceding pages, to define the meaning of the term architecture and to point out its position and limits, it is believed that it will add to the clearness of what follows if the typical characteristics of the principal races[^[17]] of mankind with whom the narrative deals, are first defined as clearly, though as succinctly as possible.

As the object of introducing the subject here is not to write an essay on Ethnology, but to render the history of Architecture interesting and intelligible, it may be expedient to avoid all speculation as to the origin of mankind, or the mode in which the various races diverged from one another and became so markedly distinct. Stretch the history of Architecture as we will, we cannot get beyond the epoch of the Pyramid builders (3500 B.C.), and when these were erected the various races of mankind had acquired those distinctive characteristics which mark them now. Not long afterwards, when the tombs at Beni Hassan were painted (2500 B.C.), these distinctions were so marked and so well understood, that these pictures might serve for the illustration of a book on Ethnography at the present day. Nor will it be necessary in this preliminary sketch to attempt more than to point out the typical features of the four great building races of mankind. The Turanian, the Semitic, the Celtic, and the Aryan. Even with regard to these, all that will be necessary will be to point out the typical characteristics without even attempting to define too accurately their boundaries, and leaving the minuter gradations to be developed in the sequel.

The one great fact which it is essential to insist on here is, that if we do not take into account its connexion with Ethnography, the History of Architecture is a mere dry, hard recapitulation of uninteresting facts and terms; but when its relation to the world’s history is understood,—when we read in their buildings the feelings and aspirations of the people who erected them, and above all through their arts we can trace their relationship to, and their descent from one another, the study becomes one of the most interesting, as well as one of the most useful which can be presented to an inquiring mind.