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

by James Fergusson

The Aryan races employed an alphabet at so early a period of their history that we cannot now tell when or how it was introduced among them; and it was, even when we first become acquainted with it, a far more perfect alphabet than that of the Semitic races, though apparently formed on its basis. Nothing in it was dependent on memory. It possessed vowels, and all that was necessary to enunciate sounds with perfect and absolute precision. In consequence of this, and of the perfect structure of their language, they were enabled to indulge in philosophical speculation, to write treatises on grammar and logic, and generally to assume a literary position which other races never attained to.

History with them was not a mere record of dates or collection of genealogical tables, but an essay on the polity of mankind, to which the narrative afforded the illustration; while their poetry had always a tendency to assume more a didactic than a lyric form. It is among the Aryans that the Epos first rose to eminence and the Drama was elevated above a mere spectacle; but even in these the highest merit sought to be attained was that they should represent vividly events which might have taken place, even if they never did happen among men; while the Celts and the Semites delight in wild imaginings which never could have existed except in the brain of the poet. When the blood of the Aryan has been mixed with that of other races, they have produced a literature eminently imaginative and poetic; but in proportion to their purity has been their tendency towards a more prosaic style of composition. The aim of the race has always been the attainment of practical common sense, and the possession of this quality is their pride and boast, and justly so; but it is unfortunately antagonistic to the existence of an imaginative literature, and we must look to them more for eminence in works on history and philosophy than in those which require imagination or creative power.

Art.

These remarks apply with more than double force to the Fine Arts than to verbal literature. In the first place a people possessing such a power of phonetic utterance never could look on a picture or statue as more than a mere subsidiary illustration of the written text. A painting may represent vividly one view of what took place at one moment of time, but a written narrative can deal with all the circumstances and link it to its antecedents and effects. A statue of a man cannot tell one-tenth of what a short biography will make plain: and an ideal statue or ideal painting may be a pretty Celtic plaything, but it is not what Aryans hanker after.

With Architecture the case is even worse. Convenience is the first thing which the practical common sense of the Aryan seeks, and then to gain what he desires by the readiest and the easiest means. This done, why should he do more? If, induced by a desire to emulate others, he has to make his building ornamental, he is willing to copy what experience has proved to be successful in former works, willing to spend his money and to submit to some inconvenience; but in his heart he thinks it useless, and he neither will waste his time in thinking on the subject, nor apply those energies of his mind to its elaboration, without which nothing great or good was ever done in Art.

In addition to this, the immaterial nature of their faith has always deprived the Aryan races of the principal incentive to architectural magnificence.[^[20]] The Turanian and Celtic races always have the most implicit faith in ceremonial worship and in the necessity of architectural splendour as its indispensable accompaniment. On the other hand, the more practical Aryan can never be brought to understand that prayer is either more sincere or is more acceptable in one form of house than in any other. He does not feel that virtue can be increased or vice exterminated by the number of bricks or stones that may be heaped on one another, or the form in which they may be placed; nor will his conception of the Deity admit of supposing that He can be propitiated by palaces or halls erected in honour of Him, or that a building in the Middle Pointed Gothic is more acceptable than one in the Classic or any other style.

This want of faith may be reasonable, but it is fatal to poetry in Art, and, it is feared, will prevent the Aryans from attaining more excellence in Architectural Art at the present time than they have done in former ages.

It is also true that the people are singularly deficient in their appreciation of colours. Not that actual colour-blindness is more common with them than with other races, but the harmony of tints is unknown to them. Some may learn, but none feel it; it is a matter of memory and an exercise of intellect, but no more. So, too, with form. Other—even savage—races cannot go wrong in this respect. If the Aryan is successful in art, it is generally in consequence of education, not from feeling; and, like all that is not innate in man, it yields only a secondary gratification, and fails to impress his brother man, or to be a real work of Art.

From these causes the ancient Aryans never erected a single building in India when they were pure, nor in that part of India which they colonised even after their blood became mixed; and we do not now know what their style was or is, though the whole of that part of the peninsula occupied by the Turanians, or to which their influence ever extended, is, and always was, covered by buildings, vast in extent and wonderful from their elaboration. This, probably, also is the true cause of the decline of Architecture and other arts in Europe and in the rest of the modern world. Wherever the Aryans appear Art flies before them, and where their influence extends utilitarian practical common sense is assumed to be all that man should aim at. It may be so, but it is sad to think that beauty cannot be combined with sense.

Music alone, as being the most phonetic of the fine arts, has received among the Aryans a degree of culture denied to the others; but even here the tendency has been rather to develop scientific excellence than to appeal to the responsive chords of the human heart. Notwithstanding this, its power is more felt and greater excellence is attained in this science than in any other. It also has escaped the slovenly process of copying, with which the unartistic mind of the Aryans has been content to fancy it was creating Art in other branches.