BOOK I
HOW TO STUDY ARCHITECTURE
CHAPTER I
PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS
Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting share the distinctive title of the Fine Arts, or, as the Italians and French more fitly call them, the Beautiful Arts; the arts, that is to say, of beautiful design. They are known by their beauty.
By their beauty they appeal to the eye and through the eye to the mind, stirring in us emotions or feelings of pleasure—a higher kind of pleasure than that which is derived solely from the gratification of the senses—the kind which is distinguished as æsthetic.
The term æsthetic is derived from a Greek word, meaning perception. Originally it described the act of perceiving “objects” by means of the senses—“objects” meaning anything that can be perceived through the senses. But the term æsthetic has come to have another meaning, especially in respect to sense-perceptions derived from seeing and hearing. It means that the perception gives us pleasure, because it stirs in us a sense of beauty. It may do so without any conscious activity on the part of our mind. We may be absorbed in the delight of the sensation; or it may appeal to our mind—to our memory or imagination—in such a way as to set us thinking and feeling not only about the immediate “object” but also about something which our mind associates with it.