“Why,—as I have shown you,—by practising it. In France, at any rate, no other method has been employed hitherto, and perhaps this is the best.”
“But how do those learn to build who do not travel, as you did, but simply study in the usual way?”
“They do not learn to build. They only learn to imagine and design impossible structures, under the pretext of preserving the traditions of ‘high art;’ and when they are tired of putting these fancies on paper, they have a place as clerk of works given them, where they do what you are going to do; the only difference being that they feel a disgust for the work because they were expecting something very different.”
“But, beginning as I am going to begin, shall I be able afterwards to study the—what shall I call it?”
“The theory,—the art, in short. Certainly, you will be able to study it much more easily; for the modicum of practical knowledge you will have acquired in building a house, or in seeing it built from foundation to roof, will enable you to understand many things which, without practice, are inexplicable in the study of the art. This will give you the habit of reasoning and of satisfying yourself as to the why and wherefore of certain forms and certain arrangements dictated by the necessities of practical building,—forms and arrangements which appear simply fanciful in the eyes of those who have no idea of those necessities.
“How are children taught to speak? Is it by explaining to them the rules of grammar when they are only three years old? No; but by speaking to them, and inducing them to speak to express their wishes or necessities. When they have learned to speak nearly as well as you and I do, the mechanism and rules of language are explained to them, and then they can write correctly. But before learning according to what laws words ought to be placed, and how they ought to be written to compose a phrase, they had become acquainted with the signification of each of them.
“If we had not in France the most singular ideas respecting teaching, we should begin with the beginning, not with the end, in the study of architecture. We should impart to students the practical elementary methods of the art of building, before setting them to work to copy the Parthenon or the Thermæ of Antoninus Caracalla, which, for want of those first practical notions are to them mere phantoms; we should thus train their young minds to reason and to become aware of all their deficiencies, instead of exciting their youthful vanity by exercises purely theoretical or artistic at an age when they cannot clearly understand the forms that are given to them as models.”
“A house such as we are going to build seems to me a very small affair. Surely such a construction can hardly supply the information necessary for erecting a great edifice.”
“Do not imagine that, Paul; construction, apart from certain branches of scientific and practical knowledge, which you will be able to study at leisure, is nothing but a method,—a habit of reasoning,—a compliance with the rules of common sense. Of course you must possess common sense and consult it. Unfortunately, there is a school of architects which disdains this natural faculty, asserting that it fetters imagination; for we have among us idealists, as there are in literature and among painters or sculptors; though if idealism is permissible among littérateurs and artists,—for there it is harmless,—in architecture it is quite another thing; it is expensive, and you and I have to pay for it. We have consequently the right to consider it at least out of place. The reasoning faculties and good sense have to be called into exercise quite as much in building a house as in constructing the Louvre, in the same way as you may show tact and intellect in a letter as well as in a large volume.
“The ability of an architect is not determined by the quantity of cubic feet of stone he uses. The size of the building makes no difference.”