Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2017 with funding from Duke University Libraries https://archive.org/details/formproblemsofgo01worr 4 ^ ' '■.■'I V 'fe i: . ;I-;-, ... s ■ ■; ^, + ' V' v ■' ‘^''V <{ .r:- : ■5;.. 4* : '-V ■'■ -^-V ■V. •••..: ■■'„ -WV v-i '-f:' ■ ■. ■. , CK ■ ^ ■ ■•• a^'T. n' J ■■- ,• r- ■>■ ■'../ ' '. . ■ ''i -'^■V ' '■■*. ' ' ‘ ’’■■'.'^'V If/' -S. -s . . -■ •^- •■ , V?. u.-# if:.' .' ' ^ ' "w -ri.®?-' .leL- %V'v ' ' * ViiiGix Axn Child {Metropolitan Musenm of Art. New York) FORM PROBLEMS I ’ OF THF GOTHIC BY W. WORRINGER AUTHORIZED AMERICAN EDITION For Which the Translator Has Selected Illustrative Mate7-ial Chiefly fro?n American Collections 153093 G. E. STECHERT & CO. 151-15.5 West 25th St. New York NUPTIALS SHAPLEY-RUSK September Nineteenth Nineteen Hundred Eighteen 153093 Preface to the First Edition T N its basic views the present psychological investig’a- tion of style is a sequel to my earlier book, Abstrac- tion and Empathy, which in its third edition is being brought out simultaneously by the same publisher. Accordingly, whoever desires to orientate himself in regard to the premises that underlie the method em- ployed in Form Problems of the Gothic is referred to those fundamental investigations. As for the rest, I believe that my book may be read and understood even without such preparation, especially since I have taken pains in the course of this new statement to reiterate in concentrated form those premises that form the basis of my reasoning. The illustrations, which the publisher has gener- ously added to the book, do not claim at all to be exact scientific confirmation of what is developed in the text. They are intended, rather, to be taken primarily as harmonizing with the spirit of the text they accompany. Hence, their intangible qualities have helped to determine the selection. This is not, however, to say that the illustrations are superfluous in scientific respects: rather, I hope that after one has perused the text, one will ap- preciate these illustrative additions with an entirely new understanding. Juist that is the real test of my thesis. Berne, Autumn, 1910 The Author > 3/ 3^ '^3. ^ ^ ( 9 ) Preface to the Second and Third Editions HE second and third editions offer the unaltered impression of the first, though this fact is not in- tended as any proof of its perfection. For books of this sort that are conceived and carried out as a unit per- mit of no subsequent patchwork. Yet it should be added in the preface at least that the failure to take up the Oriental or the Byzantine question for the Middle Ages in northern Europe does not at all signify a rejection of these theories of eastern influence. Only the consideration that a com- plicated and therefore digressing special investigation was required to make this problem of history also a problem of style psychology caused me to renoujnce this task for the present. That, in a general way, the requisite psychological conditions exist for making the artistic will of the Byzantine appear to the Gothic man as having elective affinity can even now be read between the lines of my book. And, of course, according to my whole conception, this feeling of elective affinity in artistic will is the primary thing and the historical fact of influence is only an outer consequence of it. One may rest content, therefore, with the establishment of the possibility of attunement and leave the descrip- tion of the more exact process of the formation of the Gothic-Byzantine tone to a later special investigation by the author. Berne, May, 1912 The Author ( 10 ) CONTENTS Page Introduction 15 Aesthetic and Art Theory 19 Art Study as Human Psychology 25 Primitive Man 27 Classical Man 35 Oriental Man 40 The Latent Gothic of Early Northern Ornament 43 The Infinite Melody of Northern Line 52 From Animal Ornament to the Art of Holhein 55 Transcendentalism of the Gothic World of Expression 64 Northern Religious Feeling 70 The Principle of Classical Architecture 75 The Principle of Gothic Architecture 83 The Fortunes of the Gothic Form Will 89 The Romanesque Style 97 Inceptive Emancipation from the Principle of Classical Architecture 103 Complete Emancipation in the Pure Gothic 112 Interior Construction of the Cathedral 115 Exterior Construction of the Cathedral 126 The Psychology of Scholasticism 133 The Psychology of Mysticism 137 Individuality and Personality 143 ( 11 ) ) ILLUSTRATIONS Virgin and Child Frontispiece Plate Page I. Amiens Cathedral 15 II. Examples of Paleolithic Design 30 III. A. Prehistoric Stone Figure found in Georgia B. Tattooed Head Vase from Pecan Point, Arkansas C, D. Pre-dynastic Egyptian Pottery with Geometric Designs 32 IV. Head of Aphrodite. Fourth Century, B. C 36 V. A. Greek Mirror Cover with Plant Ornament. Fifth Century, B. C. B. Chryselephantine Snake Goddess. Late Minoan C. Dipylon Vase 38 VI. A. Perseus Slaying the Medusa. Metope from Selinus B. Hercules Pursuing the Centaurs. Frieze from Assos C. Boston Counterpart of the Ludovisi Throne, so- called 44 VII. A. Animal Ornament from a Viking Ship B. Gothic Gargoyle C. Gargoyles of Notre-Dame, Paris 46 VIII. A, B. Examples of Interlace Ornament. Merovingian C. “Tunc” from the Book of Kells 48 IX. A. Wood-Carving with Rotating-Wheel Ornament. Late Gothic B, C, D. Examples of Zoomorphic Ornament. Merovin- gian 52 X. A, B, C. Examples of Zoomorphic Ornament. Merovin- gian 56 XI. A. Death and the Cardinal. Engraving by Holbein B. Prophet. Late Gothic C. Square Pillar. Romanesque 62 XII. A. Temple of Neptune, Paestum B. Erechtheum, Athens 78 (13) 14 Illusteations. XIII. Woolworth Building, New York 88 XIV. A. Plant and Animal Ornament. Merovingian B. Porta Nigra, Trier C. S. Apollinare in Classe XV. Judith with the Head of Holofernes. Painting by Lucas Cranach, the Elder 92 XVI. Virgin and Child with St. Anne. Painting by Al- brecht Diirer 94 XVII. Mexico Cathedral 96 XVIII. Abbey Church, Maria Laach 98 XIX. Pantheon, Rome 104 XX. A. Notre-Dame-Du-?ort, Clermont-Ferrand B. La Chapelle St. Mesmin 106 XXL A. Trinity Church, Boston B. Modena Cathedral 110 XXII. Salisbury Cathedral 112 XXIII. A. S. Maria Maggiore, Rome B. Modena Cathedral C. S. Apollinare in Classe D. Ulm Cathedral 116 XXIV. Ulm Cathedral 118 XXV. Beauvais Cathedral 128 XXVI. Ulm Cathedral 130 XXVII. A. Pinnacle Tip of La Sainte Chapelle, Paris B. Late Gothic Capital 132 ■■-i? Pi. ATE I. Amiens Catiiedieil Introduction historian’s feverish effort to reconstruct the mind and soul of past times out of the material of transmitted matters of fact remains, in the last analysis, an attempt with unfit means. For, after all, the channel of historical knoAvledge is our ego, tem- porally conditioned and restricted even though we try ever so hard to screw it back into an ostensible ob- jectivity. So far to liberate ourselves from our own temporal conditions and so far to master the intimate conditions of the epochs of the past that we actually think with their mind and feel with their soul — in that we shall never sujcceed. We remain, rather, with our powers of historical comprehension and cognition closely bound within the confines of our inner structure, which is limited by temporal circumstances. And the more clear-sighted, the more sensitive a historical scholar is, the more severely does he suffer from ever re- current attacks of paralyzing resignation at the con- sciousness that the 7cpu>~nv ii’sddo^ of all history is that we comprehend and evaluate the things of the past, not in terms of their past, but in terms of our present, values. The representatives of naive historical realism are strangers to these doubts. Without scruple they exalt the relative conditions of their momentary humanity to absolute conditions of all times, and, as it were, out of the narrowness of their historic sense derive the privilege of consistent falsification of history. “Those naive historians apply the term objectivity to the mea- surement of past thought and action by the standard of the vulgar notions of the moment. In this they find the canon of all truth. Their work is to adapt the past to the trivial spirit of their age. On the other hand, they term subjective every historical writing that does not accept those popular opinions as canonical” (Nietzsche). ( 15 ) 16 Form Problems of the Gothic. As soon as the historian aspires beyond bare col- lection of material and establishment of historical facts to interpretation of these facts, mere empiricism and induction no longer suffice him. He must here entrust himself to his power of divination. His procedure is now, given lifeless historical material, to infer the immaterial conditions to which this owes its origin. That constitutes an inference leading into the un- known, the unknowable, one for which there is nothing but an intuitive basis. Who, however, will venture into this uncertain field? Who will have the courage to proclaim the right to hypotheses, to speculation? Everyone who has suffered from the deficiencies of historical realism; ev- eryone who has felt the bitterness of the dilemma: ei- ther to rest content in a certainty Avhich flaunts itself as the certainty of objectivity and which in reality is to he attained only through one-sided subjective violence to objective facts, or to give up this pretended certainty and be guilty of depised speculation, which gives him at least a clear conscience, because he has got out of the rut of innate relative ideas as far as humanly pos- sible, and because he has reduced the measure of his temporal limitations down to an ineradicable residue. Under stress of this dilemma he will prefer the con- scious uncertainty of intuitively guided speculation to the uncertain consciousness of the alleged objective method. To be sure, hypotheses are not synonymous Avith capriciou|S fancies. Eather, by hypotheses is meant in this connection only the ambitious experiments of the instinctive love of knoAvledge. Into the darkness of such facts as are no longer to be understood in terms of our own times this instinct has the power to press forward only by carefully constructing a diagram of possibilities with its chief points of orienta- tion formed by poles directly opposite ourseHes. Since the instinct knows that all knowledge is bnt mediate — bound to the temporally limited ego — there is for it no possibility of broadening its capacity for historical knowledge except by broadening its ego. Now such Introduction. 17 an extension of the plane of knowledge is not possible in reality, but only through the expedient of of an ideal au'xiliary construction, which is plotted purely antitheti- cally. Into the boundless space of history we build out from the firm standpoint of our positive ego an ex- tended plane of knowledge by ideally doubling our ego through adding its opposite. For all possibilities of historical comprehension always lie only in this spherical surface stretching between our positive, temporally quali- fied ego and its opposite pole, which we get only through ideal construction, and which is the direct antipode of our ego. To summon an ideal auxiliary construction of this sort as a heuristic principle is the readiest way to overcome historical realism and its pretentious myopia. What though the results bear only hypothetical character! With these hypotheses we come nearer than does short-sighted realism to the absolute objectivity of history, knowledge of which is withheld from us. With them we grasp that absolute objectivity in the largest measure of which our ego is capable and gain the great- est breadth of view open to us. Only such hypotheses can give us the satisfaction of seeing the ages reflected no longer in the little mirror of our positive, tempor- ally restricted ego, but in the greater mirror which construction has augmented by all that lies beyond our positive ego. At all events, such hypotheses con- siderably diminish the distortion of the historical mir- roring, though the whole matter is only a mere calcula- tion of probabilities. These hypotheses signify, to repeat, no offense against absolute historical objectivity, that is, against historical reality; for knowledge of that is indeed denied us, and we term the inquiry concerning it a vagary as justly as Kant characterizes the inquiry concerning the existence and nature of the Ding' an sicli as a mere vagary. The historical truth we seek is some- thing quite other than historical reality. “History can be no copy of events ‘as they really were,’ but only a re- casting of what actually happened in terms of the constructive aims of knowing and the a priori cate- 18 Form Problems of the Gothic. goiies, which make the form, that is, the constitution of this branch of knowledge, no less than that of natural science, a product of our synthetic powers” (Simmel). The problematical character of the so-called ob- jective historical method strikes us most sensibly when we deal with those complex historical phenomena that are chiefly moulded by psychic forces. In other words, the history of religion and of art sutler keenly from the inadequacy of our historical faculty. In the face of these phenomena the impotency of pure realism be- comes most obvious. For here we hamper all our possibilities of knowledge if we try to understand and appraise the phenomena solely according to our preconceptions. Here we must, in the case of each fact, take into account, rather, the presence of psychic con- ditions that are not our own and that we can approach only by way of prudent conjecture and ivithout any safeguard of verification. The self-styled objective his- torical method identifies the conditions of past facts with its own conditions ; the former are therefore known and given quantities. To intuitive historical investigation, on the contrary, they are the real object of research, and their approximate apprehension the one goal that makes the labor of investigation worth while. While historical realism, in acquainting us with the religious and artistic phenomena of the past, has fur- nished only information — very thorough, to be sure — of the superficial forms of their appearance, the other, less self-satisfied, method strives for a vital interpreta- tion of these phenomena and to this purpose alone exerts all its synthetic powers. Aesthetic and Art Theory TTEEE an attempt Avill be made to attain an mider- standing- of the Gothic on the basis of its own premises, though, to be sure, these are disclosed to us only by way of hypothetically colored constructions. We shall seek the substratum of inner historical relations which makes the expressional laws of the formative energies of the Gothic intelligible to us. For every aitistic phenomenon is impenetrable so long as Ave have not grasped the laAv and order of its for- mation. Accordingly, we haA’e to determine the form Avill of the Gothic, that form will Avhich has grown out of the laws of hutiian history and which records itself just as forcibly and unequivocally in the smallest point of Gothic drapery as in the great Gothic cathe- dral. Let no one deceive himself : the form values of the Gothic harm hitherto remained without psychological explanation. In fact, not so much as a resolute at- tempt at a positive appreciation has been made. All efforts in this direction — for example, beginning with Taine and his disciples— confine themselves to tlie psychical dissection of Gothic man and the characteri- zation of his general cultural mood, without making any attempt to lay bare the orderly connection be- tween these points and the outer artistic aspects of the Gothic. And yet genuine style psychology first begins Avhen form values are revealed as the precise expression of inner values in such a Avay that all dualism between form and content vanishes. The world of Classical art and of modern art based upon it has long since found such a codification of the laws of its structure : for what we call scientific aesthetic is at bottom nothing but such a psychological interpretation of style applied to the phenomenon of (19) 20 Form Problems of the Gothic. Classical style. That is, there is taken into account as presupposition of this phenomenon of Classical art that concept of beauty, the determination and definition of which is the one and only concern of aesthetic in spite of the diversity of its methods of approach. But because aesthetic applies its conclusions to the complex whole of art and confidently pretends to ex- plain also those facts which have quite other presup- positions than that conceiit of beauty, its utility be- comes injury, its sovereignty, intolerable usurpation. Sharp distinction between aesthetic and objective art theory is therefore the most vital requirement for the serious scholarly investigation of art. It was really the life task of Konrad Fiedler to establish and champion this requirement, but the habit of unjustly identifying art theory and aesthetic, as had been done throughout the centuries since Aristotle’s time, was stronger than Fiedler’s clear argiiment. He lifted his voice in vain. The peremptory claim of aesthetic upon the in- terpretation of non-Classical artistic complexes is therefore to be rejected. For all of our historical art investigation and art appreciation is affected by this one-sidedness of aesthetic. Where, in considering artis- tic facts, our aesthetic, as well as our idea (which runs parallel to it) of art as an urge toward the representa- tion of the beautiful in life and of the natural, is insuffi- cient, there we appraise only negatively. Either we yjro- nounce sentence upon all that is strange and unnatural as being the result of not yet sufficient ability, or we avail ohrselves— where the possibility of this first in- terpretation is excluded — of the questionable designation conventionality , which expression with its positive color- ing so comfortably veils the actual negative appraisal. That aesthetic has been able to carry off this peremptory claim to universal validity is the conse- quence of a deep-rooted error as to the nature of art in general. This error expresses itself in the as- sumption, sanctioned through many centuries, that the history of art is equivalent to the history of artistic ability, and that the self-evident, constant aim of this Aesthetic and Aet Theory. 21 ability is the artistic copying and reproduction of nature’s models. The growing truth to life and natural- ness of what is represented has in this way, without further question, been esteemed as artistic progress. The question of the artistic will has never been raised, because this will seemed, indeed, definitely established and undebatable. Ability alone has been the problem of valuation, never the will. Thus, people have actually believed that it took mankind thousands of years to learn to draw correctly, that is, true to nature ; they have actually believed that the artistic production takes shape from age to age only through a plus or minus of ability. Although so obvious and literally forced upon the investigator by numerous historical circumstances, it has not been recognized that this ability is only a secondary matter, which obtains its proper determination and regulation through the higher, sole determining factor, the will. Modern art research, however, can, as has been said, no longer keep from recognizing this, but must accept as an axiom that the past could do all that it willed and that it could not do only that which did not lie in the direction of its will. The will, which was formerly undebatable, accordingly becomes the real problem of investigation, and ability as a criterion of worth completely disappears. For the fine dif- ferences between will and ability which are actually existent in the art production of past times can, as infinitesimally small values, not be taken into con- sideration, particularly as seen from the great dis- tance of our standpoint they are in their smallness no longer to he recognized and to be calculated. But what we, in the retrospective study of art, are always grasp- ing as difference between will and ability is in reality only the difference that sujbsists between our will and the will of past epochs, a difference which it was in- evitable that we should overlook because of the as- sumption of the constancy of the will, but whose ap- 22 Form Problems op the Gothic. praisement and determination now become the real ob- ject of investigation for the analytical history of style. With such a notion there is naturally introduced into the field of the scientific study of art a revision of all values by which incalculable possibilities are opened up. I say explicitly “the field of the scientific study of art,” for the naive appreciation of art should and must not be expected to hazard its impulsive and irresponsible feeling for artistic things in such by- paths of forced reflection. On the other hand, through this emancipation from the naive point of view and through this altered attitude toward the artistic facts, the scientific stn|dy of art first becomes actually pos- sible, for the formerly arbitrary and subjectively limited estimate of the facts of art historj- can only now become an approximately objective one. Up to the present it has been the custom, then, to thrust the Classical art ideal into the limelight as the determining criterion of value and to subordinate the total complex of existent art facts to this point of view. It is clear why Classical art should arrive at this position of preeminence — which, to repeat, it al- ways wall have and must have as far as concerns the naive appreciation of art. For under the assumption of an unchanging will directed toward the true-to-life re- production of nature’s models, the various Classical epochs of art must appear as absolute culminations, because in them every discrepancy between this will and the ability seems to be overcome. But the truth is that the discrimination of Avill and ability is just as imperceptible for us in their case as in the non-Classi- cal epochs, and for us a particular worth attaches to the Classical epochs, merely because our artistic will fundamentally agrees with theirs. For not only in our mental development but also in our artistic development we are descendents of Classical humanity and its cultural ideals. Later, in the course of the more exact characterization of Classical man, which we are going to take up in order to get standards by which to measure Gothic man, we shall see in what Aesthetic and Akt Theory. 23 important essentials the constitution of the mind and soul of Classical man still agrees with the more dif- ferentiated product of evolution presented by modern man. It is clear, in any case, that as the Classical art epochs attained this preeminent position, the aesthetic derived from them attained corresponding preeminence. Since all art came to he regarded only as a pressing forward toward Classical culminations, it was easy for aesthetic, although in reality only a psychological interpretation of the style of the works of these Classi- cal epochs, to be applied to the whole course of art. Whatever failed to respond to the questions formulated by such aesthetic was judged deficient; that is, it was judged negatively. Since the Classical epochs were considered absolute culminations, aesthetic was also bound to win this absolute significance, and the result was that the method of approach in art history was made subjective in consonance with the modern one- sided Classical and European scheme. The understand- ing of non-European art complexes suffered most from this one-sidedness. They, too, were customarily mea- sured according to the European scheme, which sets in the foreground the demand for true-to-life repre- sentation. Positive evaluation of these extra-Euro- pean art complexes remained the privilege of some few, who knew how to emancipate themselves from the com- mon European art prejudices. On the other hand, as the result of increasing world commerce, the greater in- filtration of extra-European art into the European field of vision helped to make the demand for a more ob- jective standard of measurement for the course of art prevail and to make a diversity of will be seen where before only a diversity of ability had been seen. This extended acquaintance naturally had its re- action upon the appreciation of the more limited course of European art and emphatically called for a re- habilitation of those non-Classical epochs of Europe that previously had received only a relative, that is to say, a negative, consideration from the standpoint of the Classic. Most of all, the Gothic required such a 24 Fobjm Peoblems of the Gothic. rehabilitation, such a positive interpretation of its forms; for the whole course of European art after antiquity can be reduced right down to the concentrated adjustment between the Gothic and the Classic. Since previous aesthetic has been in a position to do jrfstice only to the Classic, there ought to be an aesthetic of the Gothic, if one is not inclined to take offence at this paradoxical and inadmissible hybrid. It is inadmissible because with the expression aesthetic the idea of the beautiful immediately creeps in again, and the Gothic has nothing to do with beauty. And only poverty of our phraseology, behind which, in this case, to be sure, hides a very sensible poverty of knowledge, would make us wish to speak of a beauty of the Gothic. This supposed beauty of the Gothic is a modern misunderstanding. The real greatness of the Gothic has so little to do with our current idea of art, which necessarily has to culminate in the concept beautiful, that an acceptation of this word for Gothic qualities can only lead to confusion. Therefore, let us shake the Gothic free from any verbal connection with aesthetic. Let us aspire through the phychology of style to such an interpretation of the phenomenon of Gothic art as will make the orderly relation between the inner feeling of the Gothic and the outer appearance of its art intelligible to us. Then we shall have attained for the Gothic what aesthetic has attained for the Classic. Art Study as Human Psychology W HEN we no longer look upon art history as a mere history of artistic ability, but as a history of artis- tic will, it has a greater significance for the general history of the world. Indeed, its subject-matter is there- by advanced into so high a sphere of investigation that it links up with that greatest chapter in human history, which treats of the development of the religious and philosophical culture of man and reveals to us the true psychology of mankind. For variations of the will, as the visible outcome of which we comprehend the style variations of art history, cannot he of a capricious, accidental sort. Rather, they must stand in an orderly relationship with the variations that take place in the constitution of the mind and soul of mankind, those variations which are clearly mirrored in the historical development of myths, of religions, of philosophical systems, of views of life. As soon as we have discovered this orderly relationship, the his- tory of artistic will falls into line on an equal footing with the comparative history of myth, the comparative history of religion, the comparative history of philos- ophy, the comparative history of views of life; it takes an equal place among these great fundamentals of the psychology of mankind. And thus, then, this present psychology of the Gothic style should also become a contribution to the history of the human psyche and of its forms of expression. Because of the check that it has suffered from the one-sided Classical and subjective judgment described above, our study of the artistic activity of man is still in its primitive stages. First of all, for example, it has not yet gone through that radical transforma- tion and broadening that the study of the mental ac- tivity of man owes to Kant’s critique of knowledge. His important shifting of emphasis from the study of the objects known, to the study of the knowing itself, would correspond in the field of art study to a method which regards all artistic facts merely as the working ( 25 ) 26 Form Problems of the Gothic. out of definite a priori categories of artistic, or, more exactly, of general psychic sensibility, and to a method for which these psychical categories that de- termine style are the real problem of investigation. Yet in more completely framing this method one has to accept a doctrine which, again, directly breaks the parallelism with Kant’s critique of knowledge, namely, the law of the variability of these psychical categories. Man unqualified can no more exist for art history than can art unqualified. The two are rather ideological preconceptions, \s'hich would condemn to sterility the psychology of mankind and would hopelessly suppress the abundant possibilities of understanding art. The only constant is the bare material of human history, the sum total of human energies ; but the combina- tions of the different factors are inimitably variable and so too are the phenomena resulting from them. The variability of those psychical categories, which has found its formal expression in the development of style, goes forward in transformations, the order of which is regulated by that fundamental process of the whole historical evolution of mankind: the checkered, fateful process of man’s adjustment to the outer world. The incessant alterations in this relationship of man to the impressions crowding in upon him from the surrounding world form the point of departure for all psychology on a grander scale, and no historical, cultural, or artistic phenomenon is comprehensible until we have put it in line Avith this essential point of view. Primitive Man T N order to illuminate not only the position of Gothic man in relation to the outer world but his result- ant psychical and mental character and, further, those formal elements of his art determined by it, we need some trustworthy standards, some reliable units of measurement. Since in its composition the Gothic is an extremely complicated and differentiated phe- nomenon, we can acquire standards for measuring it only by first getting our bearings through the inves- tigation of some fundamental types of humanity. I call fundamental types of humanity those products of historical development in which a definite and relatively simple relation of man to outer world has been im- pressed in a clear and paradigmatic way. Such great model examples for the history of humanity which aid us in understanding the less sharply pronounced or more subtly nuanced cases are primitive man. Classical man, and Oriental man. Primitive man, that is, primeval man anterior to all experience, to all tradition and history, this first member in the development, can be constructed only hypothetically. And to a somewhat lesser degree Classical man and Oriental man, as we exhibit them, are also but imaginary constructions of a broadly out- lined exposition, in that remote and organically dif- ferentiated complexities rich in nuances are simplified or forced into ideal types. Such forcing is permissible to historical analysis provided the result is looked upon only as a heuristic element, that is, as mere means to an end, without claim to value in itself. Of early man we have a false picture. He has been transformed by the poetic creative power of mankind into a creature of paradise, an ideal being. He has been made the embodiment of an imaginary postulate which possesses stronger vitality than does calm histori- cal reflection. As all metaphysical and poetical creations ( 27 ) 28 Form Problems of the Gothic. of mankind are merely powerful and remarkable re- actions of the instinct of self-preservation to the cramping, depressing sense of human insufficiency, so the picture of primeval man, the picture of the lost paradise of mankind, has received its alluring colors merely from human longing freeing itself from all constraint in a mighty flight of fancy. The imagina- tive life of mankind obeys a very simple law ; it lives on antithesis. Hence, fancj" places not only at the end, but also at the beginning of human history a state of felicity in which all darkness of reality is changed to gleaming brightness and all insufficiency appears as so much good fortune. Under the pressure of a vague sense of guilt man has interpreted his historical development as a gradual process of estrangement between himself and the outer world, as a process of estrangement which has caused the initial unity and intimacy to become less and less. In reality, the course of development is surely the reverse, and that state of unity and intimacy at its beginning has only a poetical, not a historical validity. We must discard the picture of primeval man which is engendered by this poetical assumption, and, ex- cluding all sentimental elements, we must construct his true picture solely by subtraction. And we should not shrink back before the monster that then remains in the place of the creature of paradise. Let us subtract from the total sum of the ideas that we possess the enormous mass of inherited and acquired experiences. Let us reduce our mental wealth to the few original elements from which has pro- ceeded the cumulation of interest and of compound interest that has increased incalculably in the course of milleniums. Let us level to its foundations the in- finitely refined and marvelous structure of continuous contributions passed down in the course of evolution. There then remains a being that helplessly and in- coherently confronts the outer world like a dumb- founded brute, a being that receives from the phenomenal world only fluctuating and untrustworthy perceptual images and but slowly with the aid of in- Primitive Man. 29 creasing and consolidating experiences recoins these perceptual images as conceptual images, by means of which he gradually orientates himself in the chaos of the phenomenal world. The evolution of the human mind and soul we should not comprehend as an increasing es- trangement after an initial state of close intimacy, but as a slow wearing away of the feeling of strange- ness, as a slow growth of confidence through the co- ordination of all ncAV sense impressions to earlier experiences. Certainly, at the inception of the develop- ment there stands unmitigated by experience an ab- solute dualism of man and surrounding world. Being conffised by the apparent caprice and incoherence of phenomena, primitive man lives in a vague mental fear, a relationship to the outer world which is only slowly dis- sipated by progressive mental adjustment, and which, however, in spite of this dissipation, never wholly van- ishes ; for the traces of these earliest and deepest experi- ences cling to man as vague remembrance, as natural in- stinct. For so we name that secret undercurrent of our nature which we detect in ourselves as the court of last resort of our feeling, as the great irrational substratum beneath the deceptive upper surface of the senses and of the intellect, and to which we descend in hours of deepest and most painful insight, just as Faust descended to the Mutter. And the essential content of this instinct is awareness of the limitations of human knowledge, awareness of the phenomenal world’s un- fathomableness, which mocks all knowledge of the intellect. In these depths of our soul’s consciousness still slumbers the feeling of the unbridgeable dualism of being, and before it the whole deceptive structure of experience and all anthropocentric delusion fall to pieces. Because of the relationship of fear, in which primi- tive man stands to the phenomenal world, the most urgent need of his mind and soul mujst be to press for- ward to invariables, wlfioh save him from the chaotic confusion of the impressions of mind and sense. The incalculable relativity of the phenomenal world he must, accordingly, try to recast into constant, absolute 30 Form Problems of the Gothic. values. Out of this need arise language and art, and, above all, the religion of primitive man. To the ab- solute dualism of man and world corresponds, of course, an absolute dualism of God and world. The notion of God’s immanence in the world can not yet find a place in this apprehensive soul, besieged by unknown powers. Deity is conceived as something- absolutely above the world, as a dark power behind things which one must conjure and propitiate in every way, and against which one must, above all, secure and protect himself by every contrivable scheme. Under the burden of this deep metaphysical anxiety primitive man overloads his whole action and behavior with religious concerns. At every step he clings, as it were, to religious precau- tionary expedients and seeks through mysterious con- juration to render himself and all that Ts dear and precious to him taboo in order to guard in this way against the caprice of divine powers; for he personi- fies as such the precarious chaos of impressions that deprives him of all sense of peace and security. His art als'o is an issue of this magic incantation in so far as it also strives to hold back by means of palpable invariables the caprice of the phenomenal world In the free activity of his soul primitive man creates for himself symbols of the absolute in geometric or stereometric forms [PI. II and PI. Ill, C]. Confused and troubled by life, he seeks the lifeless, because it is free from the turbulence of becoming and offers permanent stability. Artistic creation means for him the en- deavor to escape life and its arbitrariness, means the establishment in perceptible form of a substance under- lying appearance, in which the caprice and transience of the latter are overcome. He starts from inflexible line with its abstract essence alien to life. Its intrinsic value, void of expression — that is, free from every idea of life — he senses dimly as part of an inorganic order superior to all life. To him who is tormented by the despotism of the living and therefore changing, line gives comfort and satisfaction, for it is the only perceptible expression he can attain of the non-living, of the absolute. He pursues the further geometrical ft. ATE II. Exajeples of Paleolithic Design {after Piette) t % Primitive Man. 31 possibilities of line, makes triangles, squares, and circles, arranges series of identities, learns the ad- vantage of regularity— in short, creates a primitive ornament, which for him is not pla^^ and mere delight in decoration, but a table of symbolical invariables and therefore an appeasement of dire needs of the soul. By covering with these magic signs everything he values, he fully utilizes the magical power, which, ac- cording to his quite consistent conception, these clear, permanent, absolute linear symbols have. It is, in- deed, first of all himself he tries to make taboo by ornamental tattooing [PL III, B]. Primitive orna- ment is conjuration to dispel that horror of the in- coherent surrounding world which is as yet unmitigated by the progressive orientation of the mind, and it is evident that a wearing away of this rigid, abstract character of art, this conjuring nature of art, runs parallel to the progressive orientation of the mind. Since in the Classical epochs the summit of this power of mental orientation has been attained, since in them the chaos has become a cosmos, it is further clear that at this stage of the historical development of man art has been completely absolved from its character of conjuration and may, therefore, turn unreservedly to life and its organic richness. The transcendentalism of art, the direct religious character of its values, thereby comes to an end. Art becomes an ideal en- hancement of life, where it has formerly been con- juration and the negation of life. But not to anticipate the analysis of the Classical feeling toward the world and toward art, we return to primitive man and his art. After he has provided him- self in his linear geometric ornament Avith a sort of basis of invariables, he attempts still further to restrain the tormenting caprice of the phenomenal world by seeking to fix for his perception those single objects and impressions of the outer Avorld that have for him a special meaning and Amine and that fluctuate and escape him in the variation of untrustworthy sense impressions. Ouit of them, too, he tries to make absolute symbols. 32 Form Problems of the Gothic. One need only be reminded oi£ the analogy to the, forma- tion of language. Accordingly, he extracts from the uninterrupted flux of events individual objects of the outer world, trying to get hold of them by flxing them in perceptible form. He frees them from their disquieting juxta- position, from their lost condition in space. He reduces their changing manner of appearance to the char acteristic and recurrent features. He translates these features into his abstract language of line, assimilates them to his ornament, and in this way makes them ab- solute and invariable [PI. Ill, D]. He produces artis- tic, that is, perceptible, images corresponding to the conceptual images of his mind, which latter have been incorporated in the forms of his speech and which, in- deed, are also slowly framed reductions and elabora- tions of sense apprehension and preserve the same stenographic, abstract, and invariable character in the face of the multitude of phenomena. For primitive man, therefore, the artistic reduction of the phenomena of the outer world is bound to the disembodied, expressionless line and, in further pur- suance of its tendency, to the surface. For the surface is the given correlate of the line, and only in the sur- face lie tiliie posstibilities of flxing a conceptual image in compact, perceptible form. The third dimension, the dimension of depth, makes up the real corporeality of an object. That is what offers the strongest resis- tance to grasping and fixing an object in a unified, compact way. For it sets the object in space and there- fore in the undefined relativism of the phenomenal world. Suppression of corporeal extension by means of the translation of the dimension of depth into sur- face dimension becomes necessarily, then, the first aim of that predilection which seeks to recoin into absolute and permanent forms what in the phenomenal world is relative and fluctuating in space. Only in surface representation has man even in his earliest develop- ment possessed an invariable symbol for that which is denied him by the three-dimensionality of the actual, an invariable symbol for the absolute form of the A. Pkehistoiuc Stone Figure found in Georgia (aiter Wilson) B. Tattooed Head Vase from Pecan Point, Arkansas iU. S. National Museum. Washington.) C. D. Pke-dynastic Egyptian Pottery with Geo- metric Designs {Metropolitan Museum oi Art. New York) .1 ■ ’ V , - ^7 Pbimitive Man. 33 individual object of the outer world, that is, for the form purified from all accident of apprehension and from all spatial confusion with other phenomena. Primitive man is artistically active only when he is drawing or scratching in the plane. When in addition to this he does sculptural modelling in clay or other material, it is only an issue of playful imitative in- stinct, which belongs not to the history of art, but to the history of handicraft. Imitative instinct and artistic creative instinct, which are here quite different in their nature, first blend at a much later period of evolution, when art, no longer hampered by any transcendency, has turned whole-heartedly to the nat- ural. And as closely as the actual borders upon the natural — without being identical with it — so closely at this later time do imitative instinct and artistic instinct approach, and the danger of interchange becomes al- most unavoidable. In spite of the unique suitability of surface repre- sentation to the above-analyzed artistic intention of primitive man, sculptural representation is not wholly intractable for his artistic use. Where, for the sake of the eternal character of stone, he occupies himself with sculpture, he attempts — by means of the most simple and unambiguous demonstration of surface re- lations, by means of the greatest possible preservation of cubic compactness, by means of few effects of light and shade; in short, by means of a modelling that excludes all spatial, evasive, chance aspects — to overcome the confusion that cubic figures oppose to coherent ap- prehension [PI. Ill, A]. An approximation to the ab- stract, cubical elementary forms resujlts from this stylistic intention that shuns every approach to life. Thus, again, the artistic representation of the organic and living, even in the case of sculpture, shifts into the higher domain of an abstract, lifeless order and be- comes, instead of the likeness of what is conditioned, the symbol of what is unconditioned, invariable. But primitive man can hardly be cited as an example in con- nection with this highest and most complicated ambition 34 Form Problems of the Gothic. of artistic instinct for abstraction; not nnUl we come to Oriental art, especially Egyptian, do we find this in its highest form — but of that elsewhere. Classical Man T he process of adjustment between man and outer world takes place, of course, in man alone and is nothing but the adjustment between natural instinct and intelligence going on in him. In man’s earliest de- velopment natural instinct is still everything, intel- ligence nothing. However, on the basis of his waxing store of experience and of ideas, man gradually familiarizes himself more and more with the order of the world, and gradually the chaos of sense impressions resolves itself into an arrangement of logical events. Chaos becomes cosmos. With this growing mental conquest of the world, vanishes, as a matter of course, the sense of the relativity of phenomena which mocks all knowledge. Instinctive fear is laid to rest by ex- ternal knowledge and slowly wanes away, and while human self-consciousness approaches anthropocentric arrogance more and more, the organ for the deep, un- bridgeable dualism of being atrophies. Life becomes more beautiful, more joyful; but it loses in depth, grandeur, and power. For in the increasing security of his knowledge, man has made himself the measure of all things, has assimilated the world to his trivial humanity. He no longer looks at the world as something strange, unapproachable, mysteriously great, but as the living supplement of his own ego. He sees in it, as Goethe says, the responsive reflection of his own feelings. The vague, instinctive critique of knowledge of primitive man yields to a joyous, self-conscious belief in knowledge, and the primeval cold relationship of fear between man and world now becomes an inti- mate relationship of confldence, which liberates mani- fold previously inhibited powers of the soul and gives art in particular an entirely new function. At this point of equilibrium between natural in- stinct and intelligence stands Classical man, whose (35) 36 Form Problems of the Gothic. clearest paradigm is Hellenic man in the ideal form— perhaps somewhat beyond actual facts — in which he has shaped himself in our imagination. He is the monumental model example for the second decisive stage in that great process of adjustment of man to outer world, which constitutes world history. With Classical man the absolute dualism of man and outer world vanishes, and consequently the ab- solute transcendentalism of religion and art vanishes. The divine is divested of its other-worldliness, it is secularized, incorporated in the mundane. For Classi- cal man the divine is no longer something ultramun- dane, no longer a transcendental conception, but for him it is contained in the world, embodied by the world. Now, with man’s belief in immediate divine imman- ence throughout all creation, with his premise of world- acclaiming pantheism, the process of anthropomor- phizing the world reaches its climax. For it is this proc- ess which lies concealed behind the deification of the world. The ideal unity of God and world now attained is only another name for the unity of man and world, that is, for the fully accomplished conquest of the world by mind and sense, which wipes out all the original dualism. The law and order which primitive man, embryonic man, could seek only behind things, only in something underlying appearances, only in the negation of the liv- ing, Classical man seeks in the world itself, and, since man and world are now one, are now totally assimilated to each other, he finds this orderliness in himself and re- solutely projects it upon the world. Accordingly, he draws directly out of himself that law and order which man needs so as to feel secure in the world. In other words, there takes place a gradual process in which religion is replaced by science, or philosophy. For science and philsophy are identical to Classical man. What religion loses in sovereign importance and power it gains in beauty. Supplanted by science, it becomes more a luxurious function of psychical activity, without immediate character of necessity. It shares this Plate IV. Head of Apiikoixte. Foukth Centura'. B. C. [Museum of Fine Arts. Boston) Classical Man. 37 fate, as we shall see later, with art, which for the very same reasons undergoes a tempering of character. In the case of Classical man there prevails a fine supplementary relationship between religion and sci- ence. Olympics is a kind of sensuous correlate to in- tellectual knowledge. Science has indeed dislodged that vague, evasive mysticism of primitive religion. But with the clear sculptural quality of the Greek Olympus as it has slowly and surely crystallized out of the haze of unclear mystical conceptions, science is not only compatible but, as we have said, is directly sup- plemented. Without that certainty achieved by sen- suous and intellectual discernment the clear, sculp- tural quality of the Greek Olympus is unthinkable. They supplement each other as do concept and percept. For to anthiropomorphization, as it prevails, along with science, in the field of sensuous and intellectual knowl- edge, there corresponds in the field of religion that cre- ative impulse which shapes the gods in human form and makes them ideally enhanced men who are dif- ferentiated only quantitatively, not qualitatively, from human beings [PI. IV]. Religion comes by degrees to satisfy only the needs of perception, no longer the direct intellectual needs of cognition. It therefore loses its intellectual, non-perceptual, supersensuous character. And now, as has already been said, the artistic development runs exactly parallel to this religious de- velopment. Art also loses its transcendental, super- sensuous coloring. It, like the Greek Olympus, comes to be nature idealized. For primitive man, still mentally undeveloped and therefore uncertain and afraid in the face of the chaos of the world about him, to create artistically was synonymous, as we have seen, with the proclivity to organize an ultramundane world of values in easily perceptible form, a world that is elevated above all the changing phenomena that are entangled in the caprice of life, a world of absolute and stable values. What was living and arbitrary in his eternally fluctuating sense impressions he therefore remoulded into ‘ invariable 38 Form Problems of the Gothic. symbols of an easily perceptible and abstract sort. The enjoyment of the direct sense perception of the object was not the point of departure in the case of his artistic volition; rather, he created precisely in order to overcome the torment of perception, in order to gain fixed conceptual images instead of accidental percep- tual ones. Art bore, therefore, a positive, almost scientific character; it was the product of an immediate instinct of self-preservation, not the free, luxurious product of a humanity cured of all elementary dread of the world. In the Classical periods of human development it has become this fine, imposing, luxurious product. Classical man no longer feels distressed at the relativ- ity and lack of clearness in the phenomenal world, no longer feels tormented by perception as did primitive man. The systematizing and harmonizing activities of his mind have sufficiently restricted the capiice of the phenomenal world to give free play to his joy in life. The creative powers of his soul, released from the immediate necessity of psychical self-preservation, be- come free to act with more enjoyment of actuality, become free for art in our sense, in which art and science are absolute antitheses. As fear of the world becomes reverence for the world in Goethe’s sense, so a strong impulse to abstraction becomes a lively impulse to empathy. Classical man devotes himself with all his senses to the phenomenal world of sense in order to remould it according to his ovm image. There is no longer anything lifeless for him; he animates every- thing with his own life. For him, to create artistically means to hold fast in perceptible form the ideal process of the amalgamation of his own sense of vitality with the living world about him; he no longer evades accidental appearance, but merely modifies it in consonance with an organically smooth orderliness, modifies it, in other words, through the inherent counter- point of his own sense of vitality, of which he has be- come joyfully conscious. Every artistic representation becomes then a quasi-apotheosis of this now conscious elementary sense of vitality. Plate V. A. Greek Mirror Cover with Plant Ornament. Fifth Century, B. C. (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) B. Chryselephantine Snake Goddess. Late Minoan (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) C. Dipylon Vase (Metropolitan Museum of Art, Neic York) I Sf ■; ^ i' i- •.i *■ ,{ i ' { . y* ': Classical Man, 39 A sense of the beauty of the living, of the pleasing rhythm of the organic is awakened. Ornament, which was formerly regularity, without expressing anything except invariability (that is, without direct expression), now becomes a living movement of forces, an ideal play of organic tendencies freed of all purpose [PI. V, A]. It is wholly transformed into expression, and this expression is the life that man bestows out of his own sense of vitality upon the form, dead and meaningless in itself. Empathy opens up to Classical man the enjoyment of perception, which was still withheld from the mentally undeveloped man who found himself in his first, rude and scanty, adjustment to the things of the surrounding world. Thus, at this Classical stage of human development art creation becomes a clear, ideal demonstration of now conscious and clarified vitality; it becomes the objectified enjoyment of self. Purged of all dualistic memories, man celebrates in art, as in religion, the realization of a felicitous state of equilibrium of soul. Oriental Man ^ LASSICAL man, with his well-tempered mood, amounts to a culmination in the circle of Occi- dental culture. He sets the ideal standard of Occidental possibilities. But we must not mistake Europe for the world, we must not in European self-consciousness shut our eyes to the phenomenon of Oriental civiliza- tion, which almost beggars our limited power of imag- ination. For when we confront Oriental man, this third great model example of human development, there is intruded upon us a wholly new standard of human development that corrects our European prejudice. We must recognize that our European culture is only a culture of the mind and of the senses, and that besides this mental and sensuous culture, hound as it is to the fiction of progress, there is another, which rests upon sources of knowledge deeper than the intellect, especial- ly upon the one most valuable source, natural instinct; we must recognize that intellectual knowledge as vain and empty, only superficial delusion. The culture of the Oriental is built up on natural instinct, and the ring of evolution is closed: the Oriental stands nearer to primitive man, again, than does Classical man, and yet there is a whole cycle, a whole world of develop- ment between them. The veil of Maya, before which piimitive man stood in vague terror. Oriental man has looked through and he has come face to face with the inexorable dualism of all being. Awareness of the problem of appearance and of the unfathomable riddle of being is deeply rooted in his natural instinct and precludes that naive belief in this world’s values, vdth which Classical man felt happy. That happy amalgama- tion of sensuous feeling and intellectual knowledge, which led Classical man both to sensualize, or humanize, and to rationalize the world, is impossible for Oriental ( 40 ) Oriental Man. 41 man because of the absolute predominance in bis case of inner instinct over outer knowledge. The realm of the Oriental soul remains completely unaffected by the progress of the Oriental intellect, for the two do not exist together, but only side by side, without any con- vertibility, without commensurability. Intellectual knowl- edge might progress ever so far; but since it lacks anchorage in the soul, it can never, in the Greek manner, become a productive cultural element. All productive culture-creating powers are bound, rather, to instinctive knowledge. In the possession of this instinctive knowledge Ori- ental man is again like primitive man. He has the same dread of the world, the same need of deliverance that the initial member of the development had. But with him all this is nothing preliminary, nothing yield- ing before increasing intellectual knowledge, as with primitive man ; it is a final phase, superior to all development, not prior, but superior, to intelligence. If, in contrast to Classical European man and his anthropocentric thought, the human self-consciousness of the Oriental is so slight and his metaphysical humil- ity so great, that is merely because his cosmic sense is so broad. The dualism of the Oriental stands above intelli- gence. He is no longer confused and tormented by this dualism, but he feels it to be a sublime fate, and, silent and passive, he submits to the great impenetrable mystery of being. His fear is raised to respect, his resignation has become religion. To him life is no longer confused and distressing madness, but it is holy, because it is rooted in depths that are inaccessible to man and allow him to feel his own nothingness. For this sense of his nullity elevates him, because it gives life its greatness. The Oriental’s dualistically bound cosmic feeling is clearly reflected in the strictly transcendental color- ing of his religion and of his art. Life, the phenomenal world, actuality— in short, everything which was given a positive valuation by Classical man in his naively happy world piety — is again consciously made relative 42 Form Problems of the Gothic. by the more penetrating Oriental knowledge of the world and is subjected to a loftier appraisal which proceeds from a higher reality lying behind all phe- nomena. This idea of a beyond lends to Oriental meta- physics a dynamic tension of which the mature Classical world was ignorant. And as a natural and necessary out- come of this psychical tension is framed the thought of salvation, which thought is the culmination of Oriental mysticism and is finally given in Christianity the stamp most familiar to us. Oriental art is a similar outcome of a similar ten- sion. It also has absolute redemptive character, and its clear-cut transcendental, abstract coloring distinguishes it from all that is Classical. It expresses no joyous approval of apparent vitality, but wholly appertains to that other domain which looks beyond the time and chance of life toward a higher order that is rid of all false impressions and sense deceptions, that is domi- nated by necessity and permanence, that is consecrated by the grand calm of Oriental instinctive knowledge. Like the art of primitive man, the art of the Orient is strictly abstract and bound to the inflexible, expres- sionless line and its correlate, the surface. Yet in rich- ness of forms and in congruity of solutions it far sur- passes primitive art. The elementary creation has become a complicated artful structure, primitivity has become culture, and the higher, riper quality of the cosmic sense is recorded in unmistakable fashion, de- spite the external similarity of means of expression. We usually fail to appreciate the great difference be- tween primitive and Oriental art, because our European eye is not sharpened for the nuances of abstract art, and we always see only what they have in common, that is, only the lifelessness, the departure from nature. There is actually present, however, the same difference as between the dull fetishism of primitive and the pro- found mysticism of Oriental man. The Latent Gothic of Early Northern Ornament A FTEB we have thus briefly sketched in their main ^ lines three principal types of human development, that is, three principal stages in the process of adjust- ment of man to outer world, we shall approach from these fundamental points of orientation our proper problem, the Gothic. Let us explain at once that the Gothic which our investigation is going to elaborate in terms of the psy- chology of style in no way coincides with the historical Gothic. This latter more limited , Gothic, as defined in school usage, we take, leather, as only a final resultant of a si^ecifically northern development which sets in al- ready in the Hallstadt and La Tene periods, indeed, in its very beginnings, even earlier. Northern and middle Europe are preeminently the scene of this development; its point of origin is perhaps Germanic Scandinavia [PI. VII, A]. In other words, the psychologist of style, who, look- ing at the mature historical Gothic, has once become conscious of the fundamental character of the Gothic form will, sees this form will active underground, as it were, even where it is restrained by more powerful ex- ternal circumstances and where, prevented from free assertion, it assumes a strange disguise. He recog- nizes that this Gothic form, will dominates, not out- wardly, but inwardly, Romanesque art, Merovingian art, the art of the barbarian invasions — in short, the whole course of northern and middle European art. It is really the purpose of our investigation to demonstrate the justification of this further extension of the stylistic term Gothic. In the meanwhile this asser- tion may be put at the beginning merely as a thesis which we are undertaking to establish. ( 43 ) 44 Form Problems of the Gothic, We repeat, therefore, that according to our view the art of the whole Occident, as far as it has not immediately participated in the antique Mediterranean culture, is Gothic in its inmost essence and remains so up to the Eenaissance, that great turning point of the northern development. That is, the form will immanent in it, often scarce recognizable outwardly, is identically that which receives its clear, unobstructed, monumental exposition in the ripe historical Gothic. We shall see later how even the Italian Renaissance, proceeding from wholly different psychical premises, has, when it has encroached upon the north and become the Euro- pean style, proved incapable of completely smothering the Gothic form will. Northern Baroque is in a certain sense the flaring up again of the suppressed Gothic form will under a strange mask. So Gothic as a term of style psychology extends further than the school term Gothic toward the present also. The basis upon Avhich Gothic form will develops is the geometric style as it is spread over the whole earth as the style of primitive man [Pi. II]. About the time, however, when the north enters into the historical de- velopment, this style appears peculiarly as the common property of all Aryan peoples. Before we indicate the development from this primitive geometric style into the Gothic style, we may, in order to characterize the historical situation of the Avorld, recall that already with the Dorian migration this common Aryan style encountered the Orientally tinged style of early Medi- terranean peoples, and that it gave the impulse to the specifically Greek development. At first the conflict between the tAvo heterogeneous conceptions of style was quite abrupt: Mycenaean style and Dipylon style [PI. V, B and C]. Then it echoed more softly in the difference in character between Doric and Ionic styles [PI. VI, A and B]. Finally, the conciliation took place in the mature Classical style [PI. VT, C]. In brief, this first offshoot of the Aryan style was entirely lost in the Mediterranean culture; hence for our study it drops out in advance. Plate VI. A. Pek.seus slaying tub Medusa. Metope feom Selinus ( Pa lerm o M useu m ) B HuicuLKS puKsui.xG THE Cic.NTAriis. Frieze fkoim Assos (Museum, of Fine Arts, Boston) C. Boston Coxtnterpart of the Ludovisi Throne, so-called (Museum, of Fine Arts, Boston) Latent Gothici of Early Northern Ornament. 45 We are interested only in the conglomerate of young, still undeveloped hordes of northern and middle Europe, who were not yet in contact with the high Mediterranean culture connected with the Orient, and in whom was developing upon the basis of the general Aryan geometric style the great future power of the Middle Ages, the Gothic. In this middle and northern European conglomerate of peoples, in this true nursery of the Gothic, we would not set forth any single people as vehicle of the movement ; the fact that we nevertheless talk in the following pages mainly of the Germanic development is not due to any wish to uphold the fiction of race in the sense of Chamberlain, but rather is partly for the sake of convenience and is partly due to the consciousness that in this northern chaos of peoples the distinctions of race are at first kept so much in the background by common conditions of life and of psychical development that the adduction of a single people as pars pro toto is justified. On the other hand, this particular adduction of the Teutons agrees, to be sure, with our view that the disposition toward Gothic is found only where Teutonic blood mingles with that of other European races. Teutons are, accordingly, not the exclusive promoters of the Gothic and not its sole creators ; Celts and Latins have equally important share in the Gothic de- velopment. Teutons, however, are probably the conditio sine qua non of the Gothic. In contrast to the exactness appropriate to special investigations we shall, accordingly, within the broad lines of the purpose of our study, need to pay less painstaking attention to the differentiation of the individual agents of the aggregate northern movement. The art of this northern racial conglomeration, at the time when it seems to be waiting for its cue, the fall of the Eoman Empire, to enter as principal actor into the historical development of the world, is sheer ornament. And indeed this ornament is at the outset purely abstract in character. All attempt at direct imitation of nature is lacking. In speaking of early Teu- tonic ornament, Haupt, the authoritative historian of 46 Folm Problems of the Gothic. Germanic art, says: “In their art there is no represen- tation of the natural, neither of man, animal, nor tree. All has become surface decoration. As far as those races are concerned, we cannot, therefore, speak of a strictly formative art in the modern sense; their art is anything but the attempt to imitate what is before their eyes.” It is, then, a purely geometrical play of line, but we do not mean with the expression play of line to attach the character of playfulness to this kind of art practice. On the contrary, after our discussion of the ornament of primitive man, it is clear that a strong metaphysical content is inherent even in this early northern ornament. In the earliest times it is not essentially different from the primitive geometric style which we called common property of all Aryan peoples. On the foundation of this elementary Aryan grammar of line, however, there gradually develops a particular language of line, which bears characteristics that mark it plain- ly as a genuine Germanic dialect. In the terminology of the materialistic theory of art it is the linear fantasy called intertwining band ornament or braid ornament [PI. VIII]. Wherever Teutons were scattered by the storms of race migration, we find in their graves this unique and quite unmistakable ornament: in England, in Spain, in North Africa, in Southern Italy, in Greece, and in Armenia. Lampreeht describes this sort of ornament as fol- lows: “There are certain simple motives whose inter- weaving and commingling detennine the character of this ornament. In the beginning, only the point, the line, and the band were used, then later the curved line, the circle, the spiral, the zig-zag, and an S-shaped ornament — truly no great wealth of motives ! But what variety is attained by the manner of their use ! Now we see them laid parallel, now dovetailed, now latticed, now knotted, now interwoven, now even all checkered through eacE other in reciprocal knotting and inter- weaving. Thus arise fantastically confused designs, whose enigma lures to puzzling, whose course seems to shun, to seek itself, whose components, endowed with Plate VII. A. Anijial Oi!Xa:\iext FR oji A Viking Ship {after Gustafson) B. Gothic Gargoyle ( M etropolitan. Museum of Art. Keto York) C. Gargoyles of Notre-Dajie, Paris Latent Gothic of Eaely Noetheen Oknament. 47 sensibility, as it were, captivate mind and eye in living, passionate motion.” There is a linear fantasy here whose fundamental character we must analyze. As in the ornament of primitive man, the vehicle of artistic will is the ab- stract geometric line, which contains no organic ex- pression, that is, no possibility of organic interpretation. Now, while in the organic sense it is expressionless, nevertheless, it is of extreme liveliness. The words of Lamprecht expressly attest the impression of passionate activity and life, expressly attest the impression of a seeking, restless perturbation in this medley of lines. Since the line lacks all organic timbre, its expression of life must be an expression unconnected with organic life. The thing is to understand the peculiar nature of this super-organic expressiveness. We see that the northern ornament, despite its abstract linear character, sets free impressions of life, which our feeling of vitality, bound as it is to empathy, would impute immediately only to the organic world. So it would seem that this ornament [PI. VIII] unites the abstract character of primitive geometric ornament [PI. II] and the living character of Classical organically tinged ornament [PI. V, A]. Such is, however, not the case. It can by no means raise the claim of present- ing a synthesis, a union, of these fundamental antitheses. It deserves, rather, only the name of a hybrid phenome- non. It is not a question here of a harmonious comming- ling of two opposing tendencies, but of an unclear and, to a certain degree, uncanny amalgamation of them, of drawing upon our power of empathy, which is bound to organic rhythm, for an abstract world foreign to it. Our organically tempered sense of vitality shrinks back before this senseless violence of expression as before a debauchery. But when finally, yielding to compulsion, it lets its energies flow into these lines, dead in them- selves, it feels itself torn away in an unheard-of man- ner and raised to a frenzy of movement which far outstrips all possibilities of organic movement. The pa- thos of movement inherent in this vitalized geometiw — a prelude to the vitalized mathematics of Gothic architec- 4-8 Form Problems op the Gothic. ture — forces our sensibility to an unnatural feat of strength. Once the natural bounds of organic motion are broken through, there is no stopping; again and again the line is broken, again and again checked in the natural direction of its movement, again and again violently prevented from running out quietly, again and again di- verted to new complications of expression, so that, inten- sified through all these restraints, it yields its utmost of expressive power, until finally, robbed of all possibili- ties of natural satisfaction, it comes to an end in in- tricate contortions, or disconsolately breaks off in va- cancy, or senselessly runs back into itself. Confronted with the organic clearness and modera- tion of Classical ornament, we are under the impression that it springs without restraint from our sense of vitality. It has no expression beyond that which we give it. The expression of northern ornament, on the other hand, is not immediately dependent upon us ; here we face, rather, a life that seems to be independent of us, that makes exactions upon us and forces upon us an activity that we submit to only against our will. In short, the northern line is not alive because of an impression that we voluntarily impute to it, but it seems to have an inherent expression which is stronger than our life. This inherent expression of northern, that is, Gothic, line, which in a strict iisychological sense is of course only apparent, we must try to comprehend more exactly. Let us start from commonplace ex- periences of everyday life. If we pick up a pencil and make line scrawls on paper, we can already sense the difference between the expression dependent upon us and the individual expression of the line seemingly not dependent upon us. When we draw the line in fine round curves, we in- voluntarily accompany the movement of our wrist with our inner feeling. We feel with a certain pleasant sensa- tion how the line almost grows out of the spontaneous play of the wrist. The movement we make is of an unobstructed facility ; the impulse once given, move- ment goes on without effort. This pleasant feeling. Plate VIII. A. B. Exajiples of Iatekl.vce Ohnajieat. Merovixgi.vx [Metropolitan Museum of Art, Netv York) C. “Tunc” from the Book of Kells (Library of Trinity College. Dublin) Latent Gothic op Early Noeti-iern Ornament. 49 this freedom of creation, we transfer now involuntarily to the line itself, and what we have felt in executing it we ascribe to it as expression. In this case, then, we see in the line the expression of organic beauty just because the execution corresponded with our organic sense. If we meet such a line in another production, our impression is the same as if we had drawn it our- selves. For as soon as we become conscious of any kind of line, we inwardly follow out involuntarily the process of its execution. Besides this organic expressive power of line, which we experience in all Classical ornament, there is, however, another, and it is the one that comes into con- sideration for our Gothic problem. Again we may start from the familiar experiences of playful line scrawls. If we are filled with a strong inward excite- ment that we may express only on paper, the line scrawls will take an entirely different turn. The will of our wrist will not be consulted at all, but the pencil will travel wildly and impetuously over the paper, and instead of the beautiful, round, organically tempered curves, there will result a stiff, angular, repeatedly in- terrupted, jagged line of strongest expressive force. It is not the wrist that spontaneously creates the line ; but it is our impetuous desire for expression which imperious- ly prescribes the wrist’s movement. The impulse once given, the movement is not allowed to run its course along its natural direction, but it is again and again over- whelmed by new impulses. When we become conscious of such an excited line, we inwardly follow out involuntar- ily the process of its execution, too. Now, this following out, however, is not accompanied by any pleasure, but it is as if an outside dominant will coerced us. We are made aware of all the suppressions of natural movement. We feel at every point of rupture, at every change in direction, how the forces, suddenly checked in their natural course, are blocked, how after this moment of blockade they go over into a new direction of move- ment with a momentum augmented by the obstruction. The more frequent the breaks and the more obstructions thrown in, the more powerful becomes the seething at 50 Form Problems oe the Gothic. the individual interruptions, the more forceful be- comes each time the surging in the new direction, the more mighty and irresistible becomes, in other words, the expression of the line. For here, too, in apperception Ave ascribe to the line as expression the processes of executing’ it that we inwardly follorv out. And since the line seems to thrust its expression upon us, we feel this to be something autonomous, independent of us, and Ave speak, therefore, of an inherent expression of the line. The essence of this inherent expression of the line is that it does not stand for sensuous and organic values, but for values of an unsensuous, that is, spiritual sort. No activity of organic will is expressed by it, but activity of psychical and spiritual Avill, which is still far from all union and agreement Avith the com- plexes of organic feeling. Now, by this statement we do not mean to say that the northern ornament, that “almost primeA’al and darkly chaotic jumble of lines” (Semper), stands on a par Avith the line scraAvls of an emotionally or mentally excited man, nor that it reflects even in a. general way, this phenomenon of everyday experience. That AA'Ould be a comparison betAveen Avholly incommensurable en- tities. Nevertheless, this comparison will offer us sug- gestions. As those line scraAvls seem merely the re- lease of an inner spiritual pressure, so the excitement, the convulsiveness, the feA’er, of northern clraAving un- questionably throws a flashlight upon the heavily op- pressed inner life of northern humanity. By this com- parison, at all eA’ents, we may make sure of the ex- pression of a spiritual unrest in northern ornament. But what is playful line scraAvling in the eA’eryday life of the indiAudual is something else in the art expression of a Avhole race. In the latter case it is the longing to be absorbed in an unnatural intensified actiAuty of a non-sensuous, spiritual sort — one should remember in this connection the labyrinthie scholastic thinking — in or- der to get free, in this exaltation, from the pressing sense of the constraint of actuality. And, let it be said in ad- Amnce, this longing for an activity, non-sensuous and Latent Gothic of Early Northern Ornament. 51 elevated above all sense, or, to choose the more exact word, superseiisuous, this longing which created such ornament lashed into the utmost expressiveness, was what gave rise to the fervent sublimity of the Gothic cathedral, that transcendentalism in stone. As Gothic architecture presents the picture of a complete dematerialization of the stone and is full of spiritual expression not bound by stone and sense, so early northern ornament offers the picture of a com- plete degeometrization of the line for the sake of the same exigencies of spiritual expression. The line of primitive ornament is geometric, is dead and expressionless [PI. Ill, C]. Its artistic significance rests simply and solely upon this absence of all life, rests simply and solely upon its thoroughly abstract character. With the abatement of the original dualism between man and world, that is, with the mental development of man, the abstract geometrical char- acter of the line is gradually weakened. This weakening, this transition of the stiff, expressionlessness into ex- pressiveness can proceed in two different directions. In place of the dead geometric modality can arise an organic vitality agreeable to the senses — that is the case with Classical ornament [PI. V, A]. Or there can arise a spiritual vitality, far transcending the senses — that is the case with early northern ornament [PI. VIII], the Gothic character of which is immediately indicated by this observation. And it is evident that the organically determined line contains beauty of ex- pression, while power of expression is reserved for the Gothic line. This distinction between beauty of .ex- pression and power of expression is immediately ap- plicable to the whole character of the two stylistic phenomena of Classic and Gothic art. The Infinite Melody of Northern Line T he antithesis between Classical ornament and northern, or Gothic, ornament needs further and deeper consideration. The fundamentally dissimilar character of these two manifestations of art shall also be explained in detail. The first thing that is noticed in the comparison of the two styles of ornament is that northern ornament lacks the concept of symmetry so innate in all Classical ornament. Instead of symmetry, repetition dominates [PI. IX, A and B]. To be sure, in Classical ornament repetition of individual motives does play a role; but this repetition is of an entirely dif- ferent cast [PL V, A and PI. VI, C]. Classical orna- ment generally inclines to repeat in countersense, as in a mirror, the motive once struck, whereby the char- acter of uninterrupted progression produced by repeti- tion is paralyzed. From this repetition in counter- sense results a quiescence, a completion of the rhythm ; the juxtaposition has the calm character of addition that never mars the symmetry. The organically guided sensibility of Classical man furnishes to the move- ment, arising from repetition and threatening to ex- ceed the organic and to become mechanistic, repeated rest accents by forming pauses. That checks, as it were, the hastening mechanical activity by means of this repetition in countersense which is demanded by organic feeling. In the case of northern ornament, on the other hand, the repetition does not have this quiet character of addition, but has, so to speak, the character of multi- plication. No desire for organic moderation and rest intervenes here. A constantly increasing activity with- out pauses and accents arises, and the repetition has only the one intention of raising the given motive to the power of infinity. The infinite melody of line hovers before the vision of northern man in his ornament, that infinite line which does not delight but stupefies ( 52 ) Plate IX. A. Wood-Carvixg with Rotating-Wiieel Orxameat. Late Gothic {Museum of Fine Arts. Boston) B. Examples of Zoojiorphic Ornaaient. Mekovingi.vn (Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York) The Infinite Melody of Nobthebn Line. 53 and compels us to yield to it without resistance. If we close our eyes after looking at northern ornament, there remains only the echoing impression of incorporeal endless activity. Lamprecht speaks of the enigma of this northern intertwining hand ornament, Avhich one likes to puzzle over [PI. VIII]. But it is more than enigmatic; it is labyrinthic. It seems to have no beginning and no end, and especially no center; all those possibilities of orientation for organically adjusted feeling are lacking. We find no point where we can start in, no point where we can pause. Within this infinite activity every point is equivalent and all together are insignifi- cant compared with the agitation reproduced by them. We have already said that the endless activity of northern ornament is the same as that which Gothic ar- chitecture later wins from the dead masses of stone, and this identification is only corroborated, only fuTther ex- plained, by the statement of a ditference. For, while the impression of the endless line would only be at- tained by having it really come to no visible end — that is, by having it senselessly return into itself— in archi- tecture the impression of endless movement results from the exclusiv e- accentuation of the ve rtical [PI. XXII]. In view of this movement converging from all sides and vanishing upwards, the actual termination of the movement at the extreme point of the tower is not to be considered: the movement reechoes to infinity. In this case the vertical accentuation offers indirectly the symbol of endlessness which in the ornament is given directly by the line’s returning into itself. We have therefore established in addition to the predominantly asymmetrical peculiarity of northern or- nament its predominantly acentric quality, also. Yet this only applies to the general character; in detail there are exceptions. Thus, there are a number of orna- mental motives in the north that undoubtedly have centric character, but here, too, we can ascertain a striking ditference from similar Classical designs. For example, instead of the regular and wholly geometrical 54 Form Problems of the Gothic. star, or the rosette [PI. VI, C], or similar motion- less shapes, in the north are found the rotating wheel, the turbine, or the so-called solar wheel — all patterns that express violent movement [PI. IX, A and B]. And, furthermore, the movement is not radial but peripheral. It is a movement that cannot be checked and restrained. ‘‘While in its opposed — negative and positive — centripetal and centrifugal movement antique ornament neutralizes itself and so comes to absolute rest, northern ornament goes ever onward from a point of beginning, ever forward in the same sense, until its course has described the whole surface and, as a natural consequence, runs back into itself” (Haupt). The differ- ence between the peripheral movement of the northern ornament and the radial movement of the antique is therefore entirely similar to that between the repetition in the same sense and the repetition in countersense. In the latter there is quiet, measured organic move- ment; in the Iformer, uninterraptedly accelerated me- chanical movement. Thus, we see how, precisely in the case of apparent relationship in the formations of Classical and northern ornament, their distinction re- veals itself all the more clearly on closer inspection. From Animal Ornament to the Art of Holbein in the course of development, the organic direction of Classical ornament gradually gives up its generality and turns to the particular, in other words, that it takes from nature unusually pregnant embodi- ments of organic law as ornamental motives, is a wholly natural, unconstrained process. Instead of reproducing the latent law of natural formations, the Classical artist now reproduces these natural formations themselves [PI. V, A], not copying naturalisticallj^ to be sure, but completely preserving the ideal character. He presents only ideal synopses of them, which suffice to display the law of organic structure. Organic law discovers itself to him in such pragmatic purity as he wishes only in the vegetable kingdom. He finds in this a sort of grammar of organic rules, and, clearly, he who formerly spoke only in signs, as it were — that is, only in organically turned, organically rhythmical line de- signs — now, on the basis of this natural grammar, learns to express himself more directly, more fluently, more vividly, and more accurately. In short, the plant motives of Classical ornament are a natural efflores- cence of its organic basis. The case is different with the animal motives of northern ornament [Pis. IX and X]. They do not grow naturally and freely from the nature of northern drawing but belong to quite another world and in con- nection with this drawing touch our sensibility in a very paradoxical and inexplicable way. Any comparison between the nature of Classical plant ornament and the nature of northern animal ornament is out of the question. Tlieir genesis, sense, and purpose arei funda- mentally dissimilar and absolutely incommensurable. We only need to look at the northern animal ornament somewhat more closely in order to become conscious of the peculiarity of its nature, which is not measurable bv Classical standards of value. ( 55 ) 56 Form Problems of the Gothic. We stated at the beginning of these remarks on ornament that northern ornament is of purely abstract character and contains no representation of natural prototypes. The situation is not substantially modified by the existence of this animal ornament. For the latter is not the result of direct observation of nature but con- sists of fanciful formations that develop more or less arbitrarily out of linear fantasy without which they have no existence. It is a playing with memories of nature within the limits of this abstract art of line without any of the intention of exactness peculiar to natural observation. Haupt says: “The animal world is drawn into the network, not at all as an imitation of nature, but merely for pure surface decoration. The animal displays a head, one or more legs, and its body is wound in and out like that of a snake ; often made up of several similar animals agglomerated into an intri- cate knotted ball, the design covers the available field just like a tapestry, and usually only a trained eye can discover that there are any animal forms present or in- tended here. The uninitiated sees the whole as mere network. But where at the points and extremities real parts of bodies do come out, they are so completely cut up and decorated and hidden by lines, scallops, and the like that one can hardly tell what they originally were. ’ ’ This zoomorphic ornament may, accordingly, have originated as follows : in the case of certain purely lin- ear formations the distant remembrance of animal forms came to mind; for definite reasons, to which we shall return below, these memories were followed out by making the resemblance more noticeable and clear, either by indicating eyes with dots or by something of that sort. All this took place without compro- mising the purely abstract linear character of the ornament. That it was not the memory of a definite animal, but only a general memory of animal life which was active is proven by the fact that elements taken from most diverse animals were unscrupulously brought together. Only later naturalization made these creatures into the familiar fabulous animals, that were Plate X. P. C. Examples of Zoomokphic Ornament. Merovingian (Metropolitan Museum, of Art. ISteio York) ■: - v ' ■- V N- From Animal Ornament to the Art of Holbein. 57 fondly but unintelligeiitly taken over by later ornament. These creations were originally only the offspring of a linear fantasy^ outside of whicli they [have no existence, not even in tbe imagination of northern man. We were saying that with these fabulous zobmorphs there crept into the abstract play of line distorted memories of nature. Now that is not quite exactly ex- pressed. For this is not a question of memories of nature, but of memories of actuality. This distinction is of decisive significance for the whole Gothic prob- lem. For the actual is by no means identical wuth the natural. One can have a very sharp grasp of actuality without thereby coming nearer to nature. We recog- nize, rather, the natural in the actual only when the notion of the organic has been born in us and has ren- dered us capable of active, discerning observation. Only then is the chaos of the actual dissolved for us in the cosmos of the natural. The notion of organic law can, however, become vital only where a relation- ship of ideal identity between man and world is reached, as happened in the Classical epochs. From this re- lationship proceeds automatically the clarification of the outer world, for it is empathy, the result of the consciousness of identity, that modifies all the in- articulate sounds of actuality into fixed, organically clear word forms. In his relationship to the world northern man was still far from that ideal identity. The world of the natural was therefore still closed to him. But actuality pressed upon him all the more intensely. Since he saw it with naive eyes, umcultivated by any discern- ment of the natural, it revealed itself to him in all sharpness, with all its thousand details and accidents. Through this sharpness of its grasp of actuality north- ern art differentiates itself from Classical. The latter evades the caprice of actuality and rests entirely upon nature and her concealed orderliness, and its organically rhythmic language of line can therefore pass over freely into direct representation of the natural. 58 Form Problems of the, .Gothic, Northern art, on the other hand, grows out of the combination of an abstract linear language with the reproduction of actuality. The first stage of this com- bination is just what we have in northern zoomorphic ornament. The inherent expression of the line and its spiritual, non-sensuous expressiveness were not wea;ken- ed at all by this insertion of motives from actuality; for in this actuality the natural, the organic, was still completely concealed, and only the admission of such values of organic expression would have weakened the abstract character of the drawing. But with values of actuality this abstract linear character readily amal- gamated; in fact, these motives of actuality can even, as we saw, involuntarily evolve from this abstract linear fantasy. For what is characteristic in our im- pressions of actuality leaves its stamp in a linear ab- breviation, the several lines of which contain succinct expressive power that far exceeds the function of the line as mere contour. This oscillation between the characteristic line of actuality and the independent line that pursues its inherent expression is clearest in caricature. Here the summary" expressive force of the single line threatens at every moment to break down into something like mere arabesque, while, conversely, at the beginning of the development the purely ab- stract play of line tends readily to assume the char- acter of actuality. Yet such accidental origin of suggestions of reality applies only to the initial stages of the development of northern ornament. As the development progressed, with the growing self-consciousness of artistic ability, the northerner, like any highly developed man, felt the need of mastering the phenomena of the outer world artistically, that is, of extracting them from the great fluctuating phenomenal sequence and of fixing them in perceptible form. Man’s path to this artistic fixing is alike at all times: translation of the outer objects that are to be represented into the vocabulary of the form will of the time. This vocabulary of the form will must be established before the artistic mastery of the outer world is undertaken. For it is a priori to artistic From Animal Ornament to the Art op Holbein. 59 work. We know where the a priori form will crystal- lizes : it is in ornament. This fix es the a priori form will in paradiginatical purity, that is, becomes the precise barometer of the relation in which the par- ticular society stands to the world. Only after the grammar of artistic language has been established in this way, can man go about the translation of outer objects into this language. The a priori form will of primitive man is repre- sented by the expressionless geometric line, that in- variable value that stands as the direct counterpole of all life [PL II]. This prescribes the path of his artistic adjustment to the outer world. He translates objects into this language of a lifeless geometry. He geometrizes them and thereby overcomes their expres- sion of vitality. For him the goal of art, as it is set by his absolutely dualistic relationship to the world, con- sists in this unsparing conquest of all expression of life. The form will of Classical man is recorded in the organic rhythmic line of his ornament. He approaches outer objects with this ornamental idiom. To him artistic representation means clear reproduction of the organic expressional value of objects, means transfer- ence of the expressional value of his langmage of orna- ment to the objects to be represented. Now, through the analysis of northern ornament, we have come to know also the nature of the Gothic form will. We saw in this linear fantasy with its feverishly intensified activity, lacking all organic mod- eration, the intense longing to create a world of non- sensuous, or supersensuous, mental complexes of ex- pression, to be absorbed in which mitst have been a liberating intoxicate joy to northern man, who was bound by a chaotic picture of actuality. His artistic adjustment with the world could, therefore, have no other aim than that of assimilating the outer objects to his specific language of line, that is, of turning them into this activity, strained and intensified to the maximum ex- pressive power. All that the outer world offered was only confused impressions of actuality. These he 60 Form Problems of the Gothic. grasped clearly and in all details; but tbe mere ob- jective imitation of these would not yet have meant art to him ; for it would not have freed the individual im- pression of actuality from tlie (general fluctuating phenomenal sequence. Only the combination of these im- pressions of actuality with tliose intensified mental com- plexes of expression made art out olf the objective imitit- tion. Coming at it from other viewpoints, Lamprecht interprets the situation as follows; “It is a time when ornament is still the only means of expression at the dis- posal of the artist. It is not that the Germanic eye could not have seen the animal world in its infinitely varied forms and changing movements just as Avell as our eye. Surely, people did not see things at that time as in the ornament, that is, in the roughi. But whenever the eye communicated aesthetic visions, whenever it was to help the artist in artistic reproduction of nature, its receptive capacity, its ability to grasp, appeared so limited that only the ornamental reflection was felt to be the really aesthetic presentation of natural forms.” Thus results, then, the specific double effect, or hy- brid effect, of all Gothic art: on the one hand the sharpest direct grasp of actuality, on the other a super-actual fantastic play of line that pays no at- tention to any object and lives on its inherent expres- sion alone. The whole evolution of Gothic representa- tive art is determined by this counter-play and interplay. The following are, briefly sketched, the steps in this artistic adjustment of northern man to actuality (it is always a matter merely of actuality; nature enters into the northerner’s sphere of vision and knowledge only with the Eenaissance, which represents, therefore, the denouement olf the genuine development). At the beginning is found absolute dualism between man and actuality. Actual things are completely in- volved in the super-actual play of line; they entirely vanish in it. The dynamics of artistic volition are here strongest; the overcoming of actuality is most con- sistent It is the stage of Ziobmorphic ornament. In the course of mental progress the originally strict dualism of man and actuality wears slowly From Animal Ornament to the Art of Holbein. 61 . away, while also in art the actual receives more empha- sis in comparison to the non-actual, though this latter continues to prevail. As the value of the actual raises higher claims, its amalgamation with those non- actual elements of spiritual expression becomes all the more noticeable, and the hybrid character of Gothic is for that reason most pronounced at this stage. This stage is represented on the one side by Gothic cathedral statuary, on the other by Gothic treatment of drapery. The connection of Gothic cathedral statuary with early animal ornament is relatively close. As in the latter the animal forms are completely absorbed in an independent linear activity, so in the former the statues are completely absorbed in an independent architectural activity of extreme expressive power. These forms at- tained such a spiritual expression as the Gothic artist required only by becoming part of a spiritual world ot expression extraneous to them. Eemoved from their set- ting the ornamental animal forms, like the cathedral statues, are dead, senseless, and expressionless. They acquire their spiritual expressiveness, which is their value as Gothic art, only by their absorption into either the abstract drawing or the abstract construction, whose respective expressional values are transferred to them. For the psychologist of style there lies between animal ornament and cathedfal statuary only the qualified dif- ference that the more advanced development entails : vague suggestions of animals have become statues with sharply stamped physiognomies, confused drawing has become refined construction. The Gothic treatment of drapery [PI. XI, B] shows us the stage where the factors of actuality bal- ance their opposites ; both have equivalent develop- ment, but oppose each other abruptly, irreconcilably, in unconcealed duality. For the contrast of body and drapery, which is so charactertistic of middle Gothic art, is nothing but the contrast of actuality and non- actuality, or super-actuality. To be sure, one can really speak only of contrast of face and drapery, for in these representations the body does not appear at all as different from the drapery, and the whole sharp- 62 Form Problems of the Gothic. ness of the apprehension of actuality is concentrated on the naturalism of facial treatment. This magnificent, accurate naturalism is opposed and equalized by the drapery complex, which the Gothic artist converted into a scene of non-actuality, into an artful chaos of vio- lently agitated lines with a strange, independent vitality and expressiveness. That which here stands unreconciled and for our modern eye senselessly opposed reaches in the highest stage of northern development an ideal reconciliation, particularly in the graphic art of line of a Dfirer or Holbein [PI. XI, A]. Plere naturalism and spiritual expressiveness are no longer antitheses, here they are no longer brought into a superficial connection, hut into an inner union. The intention of spiritualization has, to be sure, lost its great dynamic force, hut it is so sublimated, so comjiletely assimilated that it is able to identify itself with that spiritual expression which proceeds from the representation or even the thing rep- resented. This spiritual expressiveness, therefore, is no longer forced upon actuality from vuthout but is produced by it. The reproduction of actuality and the abstract play of line reach a fusion which ive owe, as has been said, to Dfirer ’s and Holbein’s power of graphic characterization, which, within the bounds of formative art, is the utmost attainable under the artis- tic conditions existent in the north and is therefore in its perfection unparalleled in all art history. The power of graphic characterization is quite unthinkable without this earlier practice in purely abstract line. This practice first made it possible for the inherent expression of the line, for its independent spiritual existence, to enter into so happy a combination with the ancillary function of the line, dependent upon the object, that the spiritual expressional value of the line becomes likewise interpreter of the spiritual energy of the thing represented. At this stage the competition of spiritual expression and reproduction of actuality becomes a cooperation which produces the highest power of spiritual characterization knovui to art history. In this concentration of spiritual energies the Gothic Plate XI. A. Death and the Cakdin^al. Engraving by Holbein (Museum of Fine Arts. Boston) B. Prophet. Late Gothic C. Square Pillar, Rojianesqub (Metropolitan Museum of Art, Few Yorlc) Feom Animal Ornament to the Art op Holbein. 63 culminates, the northern abstract art of line culminates ; and one cannot better emphasize the contrast between Gothic and Classic than by introducing for comparison Michelangelo, with whom, in a manner, the Classical, that is, organically defined art of expression, reaches its culmination; the mightiest presentation of sensuous energies is here opposed to the mightiest presentation of spiritual energies. Thus runs the contrast of Classic and Gothic. And it may only be indicated here that northern art, after it has been deprived of all sure orientation by taking up the incompatible Classical elements offered by the European Eenaissance, mani- fests no longer in form, but only in content, the spiritual expressiveness which its whole constitution requires and which has now been robbed of its proper channel, the abstract line. Indeed, the distinction be- tween form and content, that no autochthonous art knows, is first brought into northern art just through this general artistic disorientation. The inclination of northern art to allegorical references, to literary signif- icance, is the last resource of that desire for spiritual expression which, after being deprived of the possibility of natural formal embodiment by the dominance of an alien world of forms, is now grafted on the art pro- duction so superficially and inartistic-ally. The strong- est northern painters after the Eenaissance have been disguised men of letters, disguised poets, and to that extent, unfortunately, those critics are not entirely in the wrong who consider the essence of German art inseparably connected with this literary note. That only throws a more livid light on the catastrophe of the northern Eenaissance and only excuses, at the same time, those who have revolted from an art that has lost its ideal unity and who have sought attachment where the artistic vdll still knows how to express it- self in a purely formal manner. And in modern Europe that is probably still the case only in France, which has in addition produced in its modern art a sort of synthesis between northern spirituality and southern sensuality. Transcendentalism of the Gothic World of Expression E said that the a priori form will of a period of “ ’ human history was ahvays the adequate baroui- eter of its relationship to the surrounding world. So, from the character of the Gothic form will, as we have, through the analysis of northern ornament, become acquainted with it in its crudest but most striking form, an understanding of the relation in which northern man stood to the outer world must be disclosed to us. To orientate ourselves Ave again have recourse to the great model examples of human history, as we have established them in earlier chapters. There the orderly connection between form will and cosmic sense was quite clear. Thus, we saw in the case of primitive, mentally undeveloped man, an absolute dualism, a re- lationship of unmitigated fear toward the phenomenal world, which in matters of art was naturally expressed in his need of saving himself from the caprice of the phenomenal world and of clinging to self -created A’alues of invariable and unconditional character. His art is consequently anchored in a need for salvation and that gives it a transcendental character. Oriental art, which likewise grows out of the need for salvation, has the same transcendental char- acter. The ditference between the two, as we saw, is not one of kind, but of degree, as folloAvs from the ditference between primithnty and culture. The generic similarity of psychic conditions shows itself, in spite of all inequality, by the fact that in both the form will is bound to the abstract line, Avhich is not organically moderated. Wherever the abstract line is the vehicle of the form will, art is transcendental, is conditioned by needs of salvation. The organically determined line, on the other hand, indicates that all need of salvation in ( 64 ) TeANSCEJSTDENTALISM of THEi GOTHIC. 65 a broad sense is abated and diminished to a mere individual need of salvation such as is present, after all, in any inclination toward order and harmony. Art is then no longer transcendental in a broad sense. In the case of the Gothic, therefore, we conclude that this state of abatement and moderation can not yet have been reached; for the need of salvation is al- ready indicated as psychic presupposition of Gothic art by the fact that in it the abstract line without organic moderation is the vehicle of the form will. On the other hand, we see that this need of salvation is plainly distin- guished from that of primitive and Oriental man; for while primitive and Oriental man go to the extreme limit in the artistic expression of their longing for salvation and achieve freedom from the tormenting caprice of the living phenomenal world only through the contemplation of dead, expressionless values, we see the Gothic line full of expression, full of vitality. In contrast to Oriental fatalism and quietism, here is a longing, urgent agitation, a restless activity [PI. XI, B]. The dualistic relation to the outer world can therefore not be present in such force as in the case of primitive and Oriental man, nor can it be so worn away by knowledge as with Classical man; for in that case the line clari- fied in organic fashion would proclaim the conquest of all dualistic anxiety. That the Gothic line is essentially abstract and at the same time of very strong vitality tells us that this is a differentiated, intermediate state in which dualism is no longer strong enough to look for artistic liberation in absolute negation of life, but also not yet so weakened as to derive the meaning of art from the organic law of life itself. Thus, the Gothic form will shows neither the calm expression of absolute lack of knowledge, as in the ease of primitive man, nor the calm expression of absolute renunciation of knowledge, as in the case of Oriental man, nor yet the calm expression of established belief in knowledge, as recorded in the organic harmony of Classic art. Its true nature seems, rather, to be an uneasy anxiety that in its seeking for satisfaction, in its pursuit of salvation, can find no other comfort than 66 Form Problems or the Gothic. that of stupefaction, than that of intoxication. The dualism, no longer sufficient for negation of life, and already waning because of knowledge that neverthe- less is withholding complete contentment, becomes an obscure mania for intoxication, a convulsive longing to be absorbed in a supersensuous ecstasy, a pathos whose real nature is intemperance. Thus, the Gothic soul is already clearly reflected in northern ornament. The curves of its sensibility are what the line here describes. That which lives in this tangle of lines is the soul’s life; the dissatisfaction, the constant greed for new acceleration and finally the im- pulse that loses itself in the infinite is the soul’s impulse. The soul has lost the innocence of ignorance, but has been nnable to push forward to the Oriental’s haughty repudiation of knowledge, or to the Classical man’s joy in knowledge, and so, robbed of all clear, natural satisfaction, it can only give off its vital powers in a convulsive unnatural way. Only this violent exaltation carries it off to spheres of sensibility in which it at last loses the sense of its inner discord and finds re- lease from its uneasy, obscure relation to the world. Being distressed by the actual, excluded from the natural, it aspires to a world above the actual, above the sensuous. It requires a frenzy of feeling in order to transcend itself. Only in intoxication does it feel the touch of the eternal. This sublime hysteria is that which above all else characterizes the Gothic phenom- enon. The same convulsion of feeling that northern ornament expresses in the pathos of its linear fantasy subsequently produces the non-sensuous, supersensuous pathos of Gothic architecture. A straight path leads from northern ornament to Gothic architecture. The form will which was originally capable of expressing itself only in the free, unencumbered theatre of ornamental actiw.- ty gradually becomes so strong that it finally succeeds also in bending the hard, unwieldy stuff of architecture to its purpose and even in finding here — goaded to the highest exertion by the natnral opposition — its most imposing expression. Transcendentalism of the Gothic. 67 This quality of pathos can be pointed out as a fundamental element of northern form will in other fields, as Avell. The quite unique interlocking of words and sentences in early northern poetry, with its artful chaos of interwoven ideas, the alliterated expressive rhythm, with its intricate repetition of initial sounds (corresponding to the repetition of motive in orna- ment and, like it, giving the effect of a confused endless melody) — all these are unmistakable analogies to north- ern ornament. German poetry is unacquainted with the expression of rest and of equilibrium: everything is directed toward movement. “Thus, the poetry of the Teutons knows no contemplative absorption into a calm condition; their poetry dreams no deedless idyll; only stirring action and strongly streaming feeling arrest their attention. . . . Our ancestors must have been peculiarly susceptible to pathos; otherwise the construction of this poetry cannot he the true expression of inner mood” (Lamprecht). We therefore find that corroborated which the character of northern ornament has already betrayed to us. Where the intensification of pathos dominates, there must be inner dissonances to drown out ; all pathos is foreijgTi to the healthy soul. Only where the soul is denied its natural vents, only where it has not yet found its balance, does it relieve its inner pressure in such unnatural acceleration. Think of the extravagant pathos of puberty, when, under stress of critical inner adjustments, the pursuit of spiritual intoxication is so excessive. “Now, so much is certain, that the indefinite and diffuse susceptibilities of youth and of backward people are alone adapted to the sublime, which whenever it is to be aroused in us by exterior objects must be formless or in incomprehensible forms and must surround us with a grandeur that is beyond ns. . . . But as the sublime is very easily pro- duced by dusk and night, where shapes fuse, it is, on the contrary, dispelled by daylight, which defines and separates everything, and thus it must be blighted by each developing form.” These words of Goethe could stand as motto for our whole study. 68 Fokm Problems of the Gothic. The ornamental paradigm tells us enough about the discord that determined the form will of the Gothic. Where harmony obtains between man and outer world, where the inner balance is found, as in the case of Classical man, the demand for form operates as a demand for harmony, for fulfillment, for organic perfection. It rounds the happy and felicitous forms, which correspond to the intellectual security and con- sequent inner joy of existence. Perplexed by no ob- struction, exalted by no passion for transcendency, it expends its whole vitality ^vithin the bounds of human organic being. A glance at Greek ornament proves it. The Gothic soul, however, lacks this harmony. With it the inner and outer world are still unreconciled, and these unreconciled antitheses urge a solution in transcendental spheres, a solution in exalted conditions of the soul. It is important that a final solution, there- fore, is still held possible, there is yet no consciousness of ultimate dualism. The antitheses are not yet con- sidered as irreconcilable, but only as still unreconciled. The difference between the abstract line, void of ex- pression, of Oriental man and the abstract line, intensi- fied in expression, of Gothic man is just the difference between an ultimate dualism resting on deepest cosmic insight and a provisional dualism resting on an un- developed stage of knowledge, that is, the difference between the lofty quietism of old age and the ex- travagant pathos of youth. The dualism of Gothic man is not superior to knomng, as in the case of Oriental man, but prior to knowing. It is partly his vague foreboding, partly his bitter experience. His dualistic suffering is not yet refined into reverence. He continues to struggle against the inevitability of dualism and he seeks to overcome it by unnatural exaltation of feeling. The feeling of dualistic distraction, which is neither overcome in the Classical sense by rational, sensuous knowledge, nor alleviated and transfigured in Oriental fashion by deep metaphysical insight, disquiets and troubles him. He feels like a slave to higher powers that he can only dread and not revere. Between the Greek worship of Teanscendbntalism of the Gothic. 69 tlie_world, which has originally resulted from rationalism and naive sensuality, and the Oriental renunciation of the world, which has been elevated to religion, he stands with his unhappy fear of the world, a product of earthly restlessness and metaphysical anxiety. And since rest and serenity are denied him, he has no alternative hut to intensify his unrest and confusion to that point v/here they bring him stupefaction, where they bring him deliverance. The northerner’s need of activity, which is denied conversion into clear knowledge of actuality and which is intensified by this lack of a natural vent, finally un- burdens itself in an unhealthy fantastic activity. This intensified fantastic activity lays hold of the actual, which Gothic man could not yet convert into the natural by means of clear knowledge, and changes it into the phantasmagoria of intensified and distorted actuality. All is transformed into the uncanny, the fantastic. Be- hind the obvious appearance of things lurks their shape- less caricature, behind the lifelessness of things an uncannj^ ghastly life; and everything actual becomes grotesque [PI. VII]. Thus, the passion for knowledge, prevented from its natural satisfaction, vents itself in wild fantasy. And as an underground current flows from the confused play of lino in northern ornament to the refined art of construction in Gothic architecture, so a current flows from this confused fantasy of mental infancy to the refined construction of scholasticism. All have in common the passion for movement that is not connected with any goal and therefore loses itself in the infinite. In the ornament and in the early visionary life we see mere chaos; in Gothic architecture and scholasticism this raw chaos has become an artful, refined chaos. The form will remains unaltered through- out the whole development, but it passes through all stages from utmost primitivity to utmost culture. Northern Religious Feeling llj OWBVEK little the religious feeling of northern man before the reception of Christianity is known to us, however much the sources deny us here, the general nature of this feeling can nevertheless be outlined. A sleepless fantasy of religious turn, with un- clear discrimination, with fusion of the actual and the non-actual seems to have been characteristic in this respect, as well. Between the beautiful, clear-cut plastic character of the Classical Olympus and the entirely im- material, impersonal transcendentalism of the Orient the hybrid formation of the northern world of gods and spirits takes a middle place. Just as one expects to understand these gods, they evaporate again into chimeras, and between the shaped and the shapeless there seem to be no transitions, no boundaries. “The shapes of the divinities contain something incompre- hensible : whenever they are personified, the direction of their powers would seem to mock the application of any human standard. This is apparently the reason why the Teutonic gods seem irregular in their shape, variable in the division of their functions. As a general rule, the chief gods, at least, were conceived as impersonal beings in the mysterious shades of the forests” (Lamprecht). In the crude eudemonism of its general ideas north- ern religion does not differ much from other nature re- ligions. But behind this first observable eudemonism a searching eye discovers at once the vast substratum of ideas of dread, which germinate from dualistio discon- tent and impregnate the northern pantheon with ghosts, specters, and spooks. There is at work here a passion for creating fantastic shapes, which creates from the play of impressions a play of wild, confused spirits who here and there assume a shape only to evaporate again into shapelessness when more closely examined. A certain wavering, a restless agitation is common to this whole ( 70 ) Northeen Eeligious Feeling. 71 world of specters and ghosts. The northerner knows nothing calm, his whole creative power is concentratea upon the idea of unrestrained, immeasurable aetivitjL The storm spirits are his closest kin. We have only fragmentary information concerning the religious cult also. Far from devout reverence and absorption in deity, the cult exhausts itself, rather, in a solicitous and sacrificing conjuration and appeasement of uncertain supernatural powers. In the difference between northern and Classical pantheons we best catch the peculiarity of Germanic religious feeling. In the former there is an irregular, impersonal agitation, an impetuous jiresence of prac- tically abstract forces, which take a shape only tempo- rarily and even then a deceptive, enigmatic, irritating one (just as in the ornament the impetuous presence of abstract lines is also interspersed with concrete sug- gestions [PI. VIII, C] ) ; in the latter, on the contrary, there is a self-satisfied, tangible presence of clear, un- deceptive and unenigmatic sculptural quality [PI. IV]. Nor did the Greek race reach this culmination of organic creative power all at once ; it, too, had to over- come old dualistic disquietude, partially the residue of crude developmental stages, partially the infection of Oriental spiritualism. But the Homeric Greek, with his polytheism, already stands in the full sunlight, and all phantoms and hobgoblins have vanished. The develop- ment from obscure fear of ghosts, from vague, un- refined fatalism to a cosmic conception of the world and the corresponding plastic conception of the gods Erwin Eohde traces in his Psyche as follows: “The Homeric Greek feels in the bottom of his heart his limitations, his dependence upon powers without. Gods rule over him vfith magic poAver, often with unwise judgment, but there is wakened the idea of a general world order, of a fitting together according to allotted parts of the interrelated episodes in the life of the individual and of the whole ) ; the caprice of the individual demons is put within bounds. The belief is proclaimed that the world is a cosmos, a good order. 72 Form Problems of the Gothic. such as human governments strive to effect. By the side of such ideas the belief in the disorderly doings of ghosts cannot well continue to thrive. These doings of ghosts are always recognizable in contrast to genuine divinity by the fact that they are excluded from any activity which goes to form a consistent whole and that they leave free play to the evil desires of the various invisible powers. The irrational, the inexplicable, is the kernel of the belief in spirits; upon this rests the peculiar weirdness of this field of belief or illusion; upon this rests, moreover, the unsteady fluctuation of its shapes. The Homeric religion is already rationalized, its gods are fully comprehensible to the Greek mind, fully clear and plainly recognizable to the Greek fancy in shape and behavior. ’ ’ Something of service to us as an important side- light on our Gothic problem is clearly expressed here : the beautiful, sculptural character of the Greek Olympus does not exclude, as one might think, a rationalistic conception of the world, but is its direct complement as the other aspect of an anthropocentric, an anthropo- morphic, creative power, that draws its vigor from the felicitous feeling of unity vdth the outer world. Unfortunately, no Eohde has yet appeared to write for us the northern Psyche. As has been said, we are here groping almost entirely in the dark ; for the material that we have is very meager and, furthermore, distorted by later additions of Christian prejudice. The sparse records concerning the religious views of the northern races confirm for us, however, as we have seen, what the early art had to say to us in regard to the hybrid character of their psychical economy. North- ern mythology of later times can be used only with great care for the interpretation of northern relisious feeling, because its connection cvith the purely religious sensibility is only a very loose one. It belongs more to the history of literature than to the history of religion. We get, however, the best information concerning the northern psychical make-up not from direct inter- Northern Religious Feeling. 73 pretation, but from conclusions we can draw with full certainty from later, better recorded stages of develop- ment. And from this standpoint the most pregnant fact is the recejition of Christianity by the north. A people does not accept even by force any religion of a nature absolutely alien to it. Certain conditions of resonance must precede. If the soil is in no way prepared, strong and brutal compulsion can no doubt bring an outer and superficial acceptation of a religion but can never force it to take deeper root. And Christianity did take root not only in the upper soil but also in the subsoil of northern feeling, although it could not reach into all strata. Certain psychical conditions must therefore have made ready for the reception. All the mythological polytheism had not been able to bury a certain fan- tastic trend of the northern soul toward monotheism. Indeed, this trend became constantly stronger and finally led to the twilight of the gods, to the overthrow of the old polytheistic ghost-like conception of the gods; in their place came the dark, inexorable, fatal power of the norns. The development pressed forward, therefore, toward a monotheism, and since, in addition to this, Christianity offered with its cult of saints and martyrs a certain compensation for the not yet wholly suppressed polytheistic needs, the exchange of mytho- logical for Christian ideas was well prepared for. Yet for the north the greatest persuasive power of Christianity lay in its systematic elaboration. The system of Christianity with its completeness won over the northerner with his lack of system and his chaotic, hazy mysticism. Northern man lacked the strength for independent erection of a fixed form for his own transcendental needs. His psychical powers were dissipated in inner conflict and so came to no united achievement. The need to act was worn off along the devious path by many obstacles, and what remained was the sense of a melancholy weakness that then longed for the stupor of intoxication. This conscious enervation made north- ern man, as long as he did not attain to inner maturity, defenceless against any ready system imposed upon him 74 Form Problems of the Gothic. from without, whether Roman law or Christianity. When, as in Christianity, chords of his own torn nature echoed, when his indefinite, hazy, transcendental ideas met in it a wonderfully built logical system of related, transcendental character, this system was hound to have a convincing effect, was bound to take unawares and subdue any slight disagreement. Then the longing to relax in a fixed form was sure to overcome all dis- crepancy between his own and foreign ideas. The sub- ject-matter, contents, secondary material of his own conceptions, were subordinated to the foreign view- points and thus accommodated to the ne’sv form more quickly than one might expect from the sluggish northerner. Yet the system of Christianity always re- mained only a substitute for the form cvhich for the Ijresent northern man could not create of his own power. So there could be no question of a full, un- reserved identification with Christianity, and though the north, tempted by the ready form, did surrender to it, many sides of its nature remained excluded from this form it had not created. It was reserved for the climax of northern development, the mature Gothic, to find a form corresponding to this dualistic, hybrid nature and to systematize the chaotic mania for in- toxication. Only Christian scholasticism and, in a much higher degree. Gothic architecture are the real ful- filment of this northern form will, so difficult to satis- fy; hence, they wall again occupy us at length. iMeanwhile, it is sufficient to see confirmed by the fact of the acceptance of Christianity those judgments in regard to the nature of northern man at which we arrived by the one path of the psychological analysis of the style that he manifested in his earliest art. For the analysis permitted us to recognize the form will which is adequate to his relationship to the outer world and therefore determines all that he manifests in his life. The Principle of Classical Architecture t' VERY age attacks with especial energy that par- ^ ticular artistic activity that most closely cor- responds to its peculiar form will; it gives preference to the art or the technique whose peculiar means of expression otfer the best guarantee that this form will can he uttered freely and easily. Therefore, by in- terrogating the historical facts and by learning what arts dominate in the various epochs, we have already found the most important and fundamental tool for determin- ing the form Avill of the respective epochs. By means of it we reach practically the only correct standpoint from which we can approach the interpretation of the style phenomena in question. For example, if we know that in Classical antiquity sculpture, and especially sculp- tural representation of the human ideal of beauty, dominated, it gives us immediately the theme, the fundamental principle of Greek art, it gives us im- mediately the key that unlocks the holy of holies of all the other Greek arts. The Greek temple, for instance, cannot be understood independently; only after we are acquainted with the fundamental principle of Greek art creation in paradigmatic purity as it is represented in Greek sculpture, shall we understand the Greek temple and be able to realize with what feeling the Greek sought and was able to express with purely static, purely constructive terms, that law of the beauty of organic existence, for which he found, at the zenith of his art, the most direct and lucid expression in the immediate sculptural representation of the human ideal. Likewise, we shall understand the gTOwth of the arts of the Italian Renaissance only after we have heard and understood the last and clearest word that Raphael had to say. Every style phenomenon has such a culmination, in which the respective form will teems as if in a culture ( 75 ) 76 Form Problems of the Gothic. of bacteria. Now, in regard to the Gothic, if we ask ourselves in what art or what art technique it gave off most of its vital forces, there can he no doubt of the answer. We only need to say the word Gothic to call ui) immediately our close association of ideas of Gothic architecture. This invariable connection of ideas between Gothic and architecture agrees with the historical fact that the Gothic epoch is wholly dominated by architec- ture, and that all the other arts either are directly de- pendent, or, at any rate, play a secondary role. Whenever we speak of the art of Classical antiquity, it is characteristic that ancient sculpture wnth the names of its masters comes to mind as our first associa- tion of i'‘ a'.v^ >.‘’‘*«V^ •■^' • - ► •■^VV • ■'V'' " -•V't ,^ , ■; ■'’- ;■ .. !'->.' '''■ mmmiW^ ’ :■' ' . '' .'-V- -’'.^U'. J" . <>■' i¥-.' 5 !fe-:V ' :?■ ;;A'- '--if . 'k; > ' - * ifKV- .. 2 : - ■'’y ' •'vl > 'V!.— ■ . ,SCi - if. . -'■ .. ’i:- I: : fc^^' fev felS:- •■ 7r- ' • . ■. ’-jJ'-f ''-^ -' ' '-•> ^'•■. I i>* ■• i,V-> ■’■■;'■? -^y ■ ■' • . , . '•..:*-...i.^w Fortunes oe the , Gothic Form Will. 93 his discontent of soul, in the sublime pathos of the Gothic, in its unnatural convulsive tension, in its mighty intoxication of feeling, but only the compact community has been able to endure such tension. Now that economic development, world trade, urban life, and other cultural factors are destroying the cohesion of the great communities in the north, as well, a more intimate, more human satisfaction has to be sought. The Gothic, in its innermost nature, has been irrational, superra- tional, transcendental. Now the earnest rationality of Classical harmony and Classical orderliness presents itself as a seductive ideal to northern man, who has become an individual. Now he, who is no longer capa- ble of the ideal exuberance of transcendental volition, hopes in that lofty, ideal ratio to be freed from him- self by that Classical harmony, which is to him so remote and almost unattainable, and to be released from his inner misery. An immediate satisfaction, a direct naive happiness, is denied him. His happiness always lies (and that is the peculiar northern trans- cendentalism, constant through all the centuries) in a beyond, in something superior to himself, whether this consists in the heights of intoxication or in the attach- ment to a foreign ideal. He always finds himself only by losing himself, by rising superior to himself. In this riddle lies his greatness and his tragedy. One can also state the difference in quality between Gothic transcendentalism and later northern ultramon- tanism (Italianism) by saying that, with the Renais- sance, religious ideals have been supplanted by mere educational ideals. At any rate, the odium of being a product of education without immediate natural back- ground attaches to the whole German Renaissance cul- ture. That Is valid also for post-Gothie art. It, too, is rather a nroduction of education than the immediate product of genuine, original artistic feeling and senti- ment. The morbid northern yearning for education, this disguised and weakened transcendentalism, sub- jugates the northern instinct for form, and the result is the hybrid picture of the German Renaissance, or, by 94 Form Problems of the Gothic. its cultural name, German humanism. Art becomes partly inspired by literature, partly clogged by superfi- cial decoration. A conscious artistic taste is creator now instead of the unconscious, vigorous will. Of course, this characterization of the German Eenaissance is applicable only to the usual sort of thing, only to the art of the general public, as it is introduced by Cranach, particularly [PL XV]. In the case of the great names. Purer, Grunewald, and Holbein, the circumstances are different. For if one observes more carefully, they are all still adhering closely to the Gothic. Grunewald ’s Gothic takes the guise of pictorial pathos. Holbein’s graphic power of characterization is, as we have already said in another connection, the last great concentration of the northern art of line [PI. XI, A]. And Dfirer? Yes, Albrecht Durer is no less than the martyr of this collision of two fundamentally incompatible worlds of artistic expression [PI. XVI]. That gives the great tragic note to the whole course of his development. That he could not give up himself with his northern humanity, that he should, nevertheless, fight his way with full force through his discordant temperament to- ward that new world whose beginning and end is harmony and beauty, that is the tragedy which makes him so great and so true a representative of the north. For his is the specifically northern tragedy, which re- peats itself under ever new form and dress, and as its last martyr, to draw an example from our familiar present, we northerners honor Hans von Marees vfith his great fragmentary, enigmatic art. The victorious advance of the Classical sense of form which follows in the wake of the great Italian Renaissance movement leaves the Gothic form will no time to subside peacefully. But the suppressed Gothic form energies, which are rooted in so great a past, are still too active under the surface to vanish so silently from the scene. Contemplative humanism, remote from actuality, is the privilege of satiated beings and is unable to restrain permanently the ferment and full development of popular consciousness. The humanistic tendency is corrected by that great popular movement Plate XVI. ViKGix AND Child with St. Anne. Painting by ALiuiECiiT Dubei! {Metropolitan Museum of Art. Neiu York) % rfiV., Fortunes op the Gothic Form Will. 95 which leads to the Reformation. In place of ideals of education, religious ideals return, humanism gives way to the Reformation. The reaction against the humanis- tic ideal of education, with its Classical, pagan tinge, spreads throughout all Europe and leaves its record in art in the phenomenon of the Baroque. The transcen- dental character of this style [PI. XVII] is already evident from the external circumstance that the church — particularly the Society of Jesus— is its propagator and carrier. Its quality of transcendental pathos plain- ly distinguishes it from the harmonious calm and equilibrium of the Classical style. The transcendental style of the Gothic is succeeded, therefore, after the intermezzo of the Renaissance, by a transcendental style again, the Baroque. And in the northern Baroque one plainly seems to find connections with the Gothic. This is especially true if one thinks of the late Gothic, which has been significantly called the Baroque of the Gothic. The forms of the northern Renaissance do not long retain their moderation. They are very quickly extended into restless, impatient scroll-work. And it seems as if within this foreign world of organic art the old, sup- pressed Gothic fy)rm energies were at work fermenting it and expanding it. The impulse to pathos in the Gothic will seems to be communicated to this world of organic expression. Animated and actuated by the ever more powerful influx of this northern impulse, the art forms of the German Renaissance gradually quite lose that harmonious stamp, which in their case was rather lack of character than, as in the case of the Italian Renais- sance, positive expression of will; they lose that har- monious polish, and once more the stream of northern artistic volition, scorning all harmonious proportion, rushes through the world. Again, all is movement, all impatient activity, all pathos. But this pathos can be expressed only by exaggerating and stretching the or- ganic values to their utmost ; the way back to the higher and more gripping pathos of abstract, non- sensuous values is blocked by the Renaissance. Thus, we see in the Baroque the last effervescence of north- ern form will, a last attempt to express itself even in 96 Form Problems of the Gothic. an inappropriate, essentially foreign langTiage. Then the old northern art of line and movement slowly dies away in the playful scroll-work of the Eococo. Finally, in order to recapitulate the evolution sketched in this chapter, I quote a passage from an acade- my lecture by Alexander Conze, the Berlin archaeolo- gist: “In their geometric style, with its play of meaning- less forms, untold generations of early European peoples have felt their aesthetic need in the field of formative art satisfied, until, one after another, they have been drawn by southern influence into the circle of a richer world of artistic forms that derives from the countries at the eastern end of the Mediterranean. But their in- nate artistic sensibility has not thereby been completely extinguished at once, as is today that of savages when they are much more forcibly subjected to contact with more highly developed culture. In Greece, as an after effect of the mood of the old geometric style, there could grow up the Doric style, in which, as Taine says, ‘trois on quatre formes elementaires de la rjeometrie font tons les fra-is.’ But in the north of Europe, in spite of the introduction of Greco-Eoman art, the vitality of the primitive manner is unmistakable. After initial defeat, aboriginal character remoulds the alien forms and presses forward in the Gothic to a glorious outcome of the battle of the two artistic Avorlds, and even in the Eococo one Avould suspect still a last dying echo after the repeated triumphs of the Eenaissance. In like manner, in Mohammedan art an outbreak of old under- currents through the Greco-Eoman covering runs paral- lel to the appearance of the Gothic. Such far-reaching observations, however, could be fully presented only by a discussion of the historical points of universal signifi- cance in the general history of art” (Sitzungsbericht der Berliner Akademie der 'VVissenscbaften, 11, II, 1897). Mexico Cathkdhal The Romanesque Style ' I ' HE whole story of the fortunes of the Hotliic form will can be reduced to two main stages, following one another chronologically, to which all the rest is subordinate. The first is the ornamental manifestation of the form will, the second the architectonic. As the ornament is the proper representative of ^Gothic artistic talent for the early northern development, so for the later development is architecture. The goal of the later development, provided that a uniform form will really lies at the basis of all art production from the early Christian centuries to the late Middle Ages, must be to vary, differentiate, and qualify the cumbersome elementary laws of architecture so that they can express the sense of form of the free ornament. And it is, indeed, the most brilliant phase of the mediaeval ar- tistic development which shows us how this sense of form, which corresponds to the psychological structure of northern man, although at first it has expressed it- self only in ornament independent of purpose and ma- terial demands gradually masters the heavy, unwieldy material and converts it into a docile, wieldy in- strument of expression, in spite of its material resis- tance. We are only imperfectly informed as to the pagan temple in the north, and the discussion in full swing at the present time about the pre-Christian northern wooden architecture and about its connection with the Christian temple in the north does not yet allow any certain conclusions on these subjects. Burt it is safe enough to say that the early northern architecture was already governed by the taste for the perpendicular, by the tendency to create standing, not lying, buildinss. From the beginning, northern architecture preferred the first of the two fundamental elements of tectonics, active carrier and passive burden, the mutual relations of which had reached a happy organic equilibrium in Greek architecture. In northern architecture the ex- ( 97 ) 98 Form Problems of the Gothic. pression of action was to predominate, the building was to seem a free groAvth, not a burden. The real development of mediaeval architecture be- gan, however, only when the acceptation of Christianity demanded an adjustment with the ancient architectural principle as embodied in Early Christian architecture. This first led the north to stately stone construction, this first put to the decisive test its still dull and erratic sense of architectonic form. And it stood the test. We shall omit the early stages of the adjustment in order not to obscure bj^ tedious prolixity the concise pithi- ness of the line of development described. Even the Carolingian buildings need only be mentioned as an isolated experiment, somewhat out of the real line of development. The true sense of the development is first expressed in the so-called Romanesque style [PI. XVIII]. We must analyze it from the standpoint of its psychology of form in order to gain an understand- ing later of the culmination of the development in the mature Gothic style. The Romanesque style means the stylistic modifica- tion which the imported Early Christian scheme of build- ing experienced from the independent artistic will of the north. Therefore, if we get the single points of this modification, we are observing the Gothic form will in the making, as it were. For all the changes it effected in the foreign artistic shape of the basilica are indica- tions of the later, properly Gothic, development in which it has wholly emancipated itself from this foreign shape. In architecture the Romanesque style represents that stage of the adjustment of northern and antique artistic sense to which, in the development of ornament, the style of the barbarian invasions approximately cor- responds. It wears the same grand, steadfast serious- ness, the same heavy, material splendor, which results from the fact that the two art worlds do not interpene- trate, but stand firmly and frankly beside each other. Their respective strengths seem to be in tune, so that, in spite of their abrupt juxtaposition, a certain unity of impression is imparted. Romanesque architecture forms a style because the adjustment is a frank and open one Plate XVI IP Abbey Ciiukch. Maria Laaoh a The Eomanesque Style. 99 in which every element vigorously maintains its place. Northern artistic will has here succeeded in gaining a footing, as far as that is possible while keeping the transmitted scheme of the basilica, dependent on antique tradition. We recognized the Gothic form will as the striving for untrammeled action, for an expressive activity of immaterial sort. Now, if we compare a Eomanesque minster [PI. XVIII] with an Early Christian basilica [PI. XIV, C], even the exterior shows us what this northern expressional will has made out of the basilical scheme. The Early Christian basilica has a homogene- ous accent. The uniform movement of the nave toward the sanctuary is quite clearly recorded outside, also. Now, this simple, elementary scheme of the basilica un- dergoes in the Eomanesque style a thoroughgoing divi- sion into parts which destroys its homogeneous character and substitutes a rich variety for unattractive simplicity. Instead of the one accent there is a multiplicity of ac- cents, which have a certain rhythmic constraint. It is like comparing a positive, logically constructed Latin sentence to a verse from the Hildebrandslied with its restless, gnarled, singularly expressive rhythm and its almost hypertrophous wealth of accents. This ponder- ous, condensed sentence structure, which almost bursts from the amount of activity compressed in it, points the way for our understanding of the ponderousness and condensation of the Eomanesque style of architec- ture. Here, movement becomes action. And the propen- sity of Eomanesque architecture for division into parts is nothing but the Gothic need of action, which wishes to reshape and differentiate in accordance with its spirit the calm, outwardly quite objective, inexpressive form of the Early Christian basilica. People generally speak of the need of Eomanesque architecture for pictorial appearance and thereby confuse cause and effect. For this pictorial appearance is only the second- ary effect of that primary manifestation of action which shows in the division into parts. This need of action, in dividing the expressionless unity of appearance into parts and in calling forth individual forces from the 100 Foem Peoblems op the Gothic. dead mass, resolves the calm into activity and re- places simplicity with variety. And the natural result of such restless activity and variation is the pictorial effect. This pictorial character is perpetuated in northern architecture only as long as the northern form ener- gies have to continue to develop on the basis of the old mass construiction, in which the pictorial effect arises merely from the contrast between the dead mass and its division into parts which is made by the northern form energy. As soon as this basis disappears and the division into parts, with its expression of action, no longer stands out against the background of dead mass— that is, in the Gothic proper — the relief character of the Romanesque style vanishes ; there vanishes, in other words, its pictorial effect. The pure Gothic is certainly full of action, but without true pictorial effect. This clearly proves the pictorial effect of the Roman- esque style is not an end in itself, but only the conse- quence of a need for action which is still adjusting itself to the Roman style of mass and wall architecture. The extraordinary pictorial effect of the style of the bar- barian invasions rests on analogous premises. What has been said applies to the rich division into parts of the ground-plan and of the exterior as well. The outer appearance is given its character by a sys- tem of blind arcades and pilaster strips so that the dead walls break up in life and movement. This life goes on separated still from the real structure of the building and is only externally imposed upon it, is only a decorative accessory. One has the impression that this accumulation of expression of organic life, which appears in the arcades that enliven the wall, is a sort of makeshift for the strong northern longing for ex- pression that has not yet found its real opportunity, namely, superorganic structural language. For in matters of construction the Romanesque style is, of course, subservient still to the antique scheme. Thus, the northern form will is able to express itself only alongside the fundamental structure of the building, not by means of the structure, as the Gothic does. The outlay of externally and indirectly employed power. The Romanesque Style. 101 which, in consonance with the fundamental principle of the building’, still uses organic means of expression, has to make good the lack of internally and directly employ- ed power. In this respect the tendency of the Romanesque style is analogous to the Baroque degeneration [PI. XVII]. For we feel every phenomenon of style that shows organic life under altogether too severe a stress to he Baroque. And this over stress always comes when the right valves are clogged and the proper release cannot take place, when the resources of organic ex- pression must regulate a vitality which is really too powerful for them and which can be kept in control only by superorganic powers. And the Romanesque style is just as remote as the Baroque from superorganic, abstract means of expression — those of the Gothic proper. Only, in the one case the road is still closed because of the dependence upon antique tradition, in the other case the road is blocked again by the revival and the absolute predominance of this same antique tradition. Like the Baroque, the Romanesque style is a Gothic attempted with unsuitable, that is, with only organic means. And we continually become more conscious that the Renais- sance is only a kind of foreign shape in this tremendous, otheiuvise uninterrupted development from the earliest northern beginnings clear to the Baroque, in fact, to the Rococo. From the exterior of the basilica the extended nave makes the whole building seem a lying one [PL XIV, C]. Given the tendency of northern artistic volition to cre- ate standing, freely rising buildings, with the expression of unrestrained action, the long, lying basilica! form would, obviously, be objectionable. An upward expan- sion must be wrested from it at all costs. This effort results in the Romanesque system of many towers, which replaces the horizontal accentuation of the basil- ica with an already quite marked vertical accentuation. Even in this case, it is still an attempt with unsuitable means. The towers are stuck on more or less arbi- trarily; their vertical force does not grow directly out of the inner structure of the building; hence, lacking this structural elasticity, they cannot overcome the impression 102 Foem Pkoblems of The Gothic. of material weight. Here, too, the saving word is not yet spoken; consequently, what is still denied direct realization is attempted by a diversity, by an accumula- tion of effects. The change could proceed only from the inside. Only out of the innermost core of the building could the new be formed. As soon as this has happened, as soon as this right cue has been given, the exterior shape of the building takes care of itself. The building must first find its own soul in order to emancipate itself from the body and to give free vent to the Gothic instinct for height, to this predilection for an infinite, immaterial activity. This emancipation from the body, that is, from the whole sensuous architectural conception of antique tradition, commences in the Eomanesque with the first attempts at vaulting. With the first attempts at vaulting the northern architect strikes at the heart of the antique architectural form previously nnprofaned by him. We had better treat this important proceeding in a special chapter. Inceptive Emancipation from the Principle of Classical Architecture A NCIENT architecture, under Oriental inspiration, ^ had already deeply occupied itself with the prob- lem of vaulting in the Hellenistic period and further in the Eoman period. Eoman provincial art left imposing illustrations of its solution on northern soil as well [PI. XIV, B]. But with this ancient Classical tradition of vaulting the mediaeval art of vaulting that is now setting in has only some degree of connection technically, none artistically. It would certainly be easier to find artistic relations with the Oriental tradition of vault- ing, which, just like the later northern tradition, aimed at a pictorial rendition of space. But that would lead us too far afield. In order to understand the fundamental ditference between the Classical and the Gothic, or northern, idea of vaulting, we must see what artistic ends were subserved by Classical vaulting. The genesis of the Classical art of vaulting is closely connected with the construction of interior space which began in Hellenistic times and reached its culmination in Eoman times. We observed that in the Greek epoch, space, as such, played no artistic role ; Greek archi- tecture, we saw, was pure tectonics, without intention of creating space. Now, in Hellenistic times Greek sensibility has lost its sculptural character, which had tended wholly toward the substantial and tangible; by contact with the Orient it has become impregnated with non-sensuous, spiritual qualities and, consequently, from the tectonics there evolves an art of space creation. We have already written of these relationships elsewhere. Even in this intention of creating space, however, the true antique remains Classical, that is, it approaches even space with organic constructive intent and tries to treat this, it would seem, as something organic, or living, in fact, as something corporeal. In other words, clarity of form, the ideal of Greek tectonics, is super- seded by clarity of space, the ideal of Eoman archi- tecture; the organic production of form is super- ( 103 ) 104 Form Problems of the Gothic. seded by the organic production of space; the sculp- ture of form is superseded by the sculpture of space (if this audacious expression, which, however, exactly fits the circumstances, can be allowed). It is intended that the limits of the space shall be such as the space would have set for itself, as it were, in order to individualize itself from infinite space. It is intended that the impression shall arise of natural spatial limits within which the space can lead an independent life within organic bounds. Thus, it is intended that the unsensuous, that is, space, be sensualized, that the immaterial be materialized, that the intangible be objectified. These are the artistic aims promoted by Classical spatial art, which has the Pantheon as its most brilliant achievement [PI. XIX]. Here, the vaulting is only a means to the realization of sensuous sculpture of space, the ideal of which is to create, even by means of spatial relationships, the impression of a harmonious life, calm and self-balanced. In this harmonious picture of space the battle of burdening and carrying forces has now completely ceased. The mitigation of the structurally unavoidable clash of burden and power, which Greek tectonics could effect only indirectly, that is, by means of a whole system of symbolic, intermediate members, Roman sensuous sculpture of space effects directly by means of the art of vaulting: in its gentle, organic roundness the vaulting assimilates all the carry- ing forces and leads them without any violence to a calm, obvious balance and conclusion. It would be hard to de- cide whether such an architectonic picture as the Pantheon rises up from the earth or bears down upon it ; the case is, rather, that these impressions of carrying and burdening are mutually annulled by the absolutely organic production of space ; the burdening and carry- ing forces are in a state of exact equilibrium. We see, therefore, that in Roman art the vaulting is — apart from its imrely practical s’'^nificance in buildings of utility— the result of a certain sensuous sculpture of space and, hence, plainly displays Clas- sical character. Plate XIX. Pantheox. Rome Inceptive Emancipation ebom the Classical. 105 Our whole account of the non-seiisuous volition of Gothic art j>uides us at once to an understanding of the quite different artistic requirements which the mediaeval art of vaulting has to meet. This is not the result of any kind of organic, sensuous, sculptural tendencies ; rather, it serves a striving for super- sensuous expression unacquainted with the concept of harmony. It is not concerned with the balance of carrying and burdening elements, active and passive elements, vertical and horizontal elements ; but the action, the verticality, has to carry alone the artistic expression. To overcome the burden by a freely rising, autonomous action, to overcome the material by an immaterial kinetic expression — such is the purpose that hovers before the mediaeval art of vaulting, the goal it attains in the mature Gothic. In the mature Gothic one can scarcely speak of a ceiling as burden [PI. I]. For the perception and impression, the upper limit of the space is only the result of the union of the un- burdened vertical forces that press on from all sides and let the movement echo away into infinity, as it were. Only by keeping this goal in mind can we appreciate in their entire, momentous significance the first attempts at vaulting in northern architecture. Only then, behind the technical advances, do we see struggling for expression the form will, which makes them artistic advances., as w'ell. In our discussion we omit entirely the question of the borrowing of architectural forms. This question first becomes acute when the foreign forms are welcome to the peculiar form will, and then it is no longer a matter of borrowing, but of independent reproduction. Then the acquaintance with the foreign serves at most as a cue to prompt the still uncertain and groping form will to utterance. It only provokes and expedites, therefore, what is already fore-ordained and ripe for expression in the inner line of developaient. So these external matters cannot alter the inner course of develoiiment, and a discussion devoted only to this inner, almost underground development can appro- 106 Foem Pkoblems of thf Gothic. priately quite disregard these irrelevant external mat- ters. The development made a beginning with the readiest and technically simplest application of the prin- ciple of vaulting, the barrel vault [PI. XX, A]. With it the first assault was attempted against the roof and its heaviness. Yet this undifferentiated, expressionless, structurally unaccented kind of vaulting, with its organ- ically compact form, did not offer the longing for ab- stract expression of northern artistic volition any op- portunity to take hold and assert itself. This regular, round form, in which the active and passive forces were undiscriminated and which wms consequently unac- cented structurally, was a dead mass for the non- sensuous northern artistic feeling. The attempt had to be made to get pronounced accents out of the uniform continuity of the vault; the attempt had to be made to give the mass of the vault an expression of struc- tural action corresponding to the Gothic need of ex- pression. Cross-vaulting [PI. XX, B] more nearly met these artistic requirements and so in the Eomanesque attained a iiredominance that it had never had before. For the whole treatment — especially the decorative treatment — of the cross-vault in Eoman times shows that it was then cultivated not for the sake of its structural and mimic expressiveness, but only for its great technical advantages. It is significant also that the south of France, with its unbroken ancient tradition, refused cross-vaulting any firm footing, although in this region the best guidance to technical perfection in vaulting was offered by the imposing Eoman vaulted buildings. Southern France did not advance to cross- vaulting, it retained the barrel vault and gave it a monumental shape extremely refined technically. It did not make the advance to cross-vaulting, because this contradicted its sense of form, which was still tinged by the antique. But the further we go into central and northern France and the more the Teutonic element counts in the population, the more we see the cross-vault dominate, and the most, finally, in Norman architecture. On the other hand, how very Plate XX. A. Notke-Dame-Du-Port, Cleemoxt-Fekrand B. La Chapelle St. Mesmix T . '¥ -r^. . ■» . 1 . ' ■ ‘4., 'f>. . ‘4 V, •' Inceptive Emancipation from the Classical. 19 i distasteful the cross-vault was to the Classical form will is best shown by that aversion of the Kenaissance to it which Burckhardt expressly emphasized. To be sure, cross-vaulting was still continually used, but con- cealed. The mimically patent expression of its struc- ture was taken away either, as in Roman times, by coffering, or by decorating with other details. But the cross-vault went far toward satisfying the northern form will. For, in contrast to the barrel vault, which for northern sensibility was dead, uniform mass, there already exists in its case a clear, well- arranged division into parts. The vaulting already re- veals itself as action here. A unitary accent of height is plainly expressed at the meeting of the four sec- troids, and this accentuation of the crown is enough to give the whole vault, in spite of its real lowness, the illusion of rising up in the middle. From barrel vaulting, which is entirely undifferentiated in the direction of the active or the passive, cross-vaulting is distinguished, therefore, by its pronounced active character. In particular, the groins, along which the sectroids come together, are decisive for this im- pression; they give the vault a linear mimicry that al- together corresponded to the northern artistic will. It is evident that the future Gothic development went to work on this groining. The first step was to em- phasize this linear mimicry by outlining the groin arches with ribs [PI. XXI, B], which originally had no in- herent connection with the vaulting and, besides their purpose of support, also served to reinforce the linear expression. The Romans, too, had already used this rib strengthening, but it is characteristic that in their case “the strengthening was of more consequence during the execution than for the finished building” (Dehio and Bezold). In other words, with the Romans the rib strengthening played only a practical role, not an artistic one ; it was but means to an end. In Romanesque art, however, it was both end in itself and vehicle of artistic expression. On the other hand, German architecture shows by many examples — the practice was common in Westphalia, especially — that 108 Fobm Problems of the Gothic. the ribs were attached to the finished vaulting and are in this way plainly to he recognized as mere decorative members, that is, as mere mimic bearers of expression. Now the second great decisive step in this groin development consists in allowing the inner construction of the vault to be covered with this linear mimicry. It is the great Gothic transformation of the vaulting system that makes the ribs the real bearers of the vaulting construction and puts the sectroids into the frame only as filling. The ribs become the essential scaffold of the whole construction : the artistic sig- nificance of the ribs becomes one with their structural significance. And we shall see how this process, decisive for the whole Gothic problem, continually repeats itself, how always at first the Gotliic longing for ex- pression is able to manifest itself only superficially and utters itself only decoratively, beyond the construction, as it were, until, finally, it discovers that language in which alone it can express itself in a convincing manner, namely the abstract, non-sensuous language of con- struction. Then all impediments to utterance disappear and the unsullied, unreserved performance of the faculty of expression is guaranteed. This idea of letting the structural element be an end in itself, of making it the bearer of the artistic expression, ivas hovering more or less consciously be- fore the northern architect also when he introduced the pillar as sup]>orting member and let it gradually crowd out the column. This crowding out did not take place quickly ; the suggestive power of antique tradition was too strong for the column, this true representative of antique architecture, to have died out at once. At first the pillar only timidly dared to assert itself be- side the column, until it finally became evident that the future of the development belonged to it. And the basilica with ]nllars soon played a dominating role, particularly in regions that lay far from the scene of Homan influence and were consequeiith- less exposed to antique suggestion. It may readily be seen why the northern artistic sense found the column distasteful and jireferred the Inceptive. Emancipation fbom the Classical. 109 pillar. The structural function of support is organ- ically perceptible in the column, but for this organic perceptibility northern artistic sense lacked that cul- tivated sensuousness which the antique had. The pil- lar, on the contrary, is entirely objective and exercises the function of carrying without any by-product of expression. But precisely this objective, structural character of the pillar offered the northerner’s desire for abstract expression a chance of getting a foothold, as the column, which was tied to a world of organic expression, did not. The fact that the rectangular pillar made its ap- pearance already in early Romanesque times proves that it was adopted at first only because its shape met the northern longing for expression. It is not true that, as is usually said, it put in its appearance when vaulting began to be intended. But doubtless from the tendency toward vaulting the independent preference for it received a dependent technical justification; that is, in connection ivith the purposes of vaulting its mere artistic significance became also a structural one. For since the pressure of the vault in cross-vaulting is not evenly distributed but is concentrated on the four outer corners, this pressure concentrated on the four angles below needs stronger support than the weak columns could offer. Under these circumstances the pillar presented itself as the proper substitute for the column. Through this structural connection of vault and pillar, however, the pillar gradually begins to lose its objective character. Its latent expressiveness seems to be aroused by its close connection with the girths and ribs of the vaulting. It is no longer an objective supporting member, as it was in the unvaulted basilica. After it has come in touch with the vaulting by means of engaged columns which receive the ribs of the vault, its vital energy seems awakened and it no longer seems to carry, but to ascend. It takes part as an active member in the general vertical movement in process of development, and the structural connection of the pillar and vault systems begins to express itself in a 110 Form Problems of the. Gothic. clear, convincing mimicry [PI. XXI, B]. This simple falling back upon the structural, funda- mental elements of the building and this renunciation of all antique artifices for translating into the organic, give the interior construction of the Eomanesque minster its stamp, which is seen in large scale and in small. As an example in point, the form of the Eoman- esque capital may be recalled. The comparison of a Eomanesque cubiform capital [PI. XI, C] in its clear tectonic form with an antique capital [PI. XII] shows best, perhaps, the tendency of the Eomanesque archi- tect to go back to clear, structural objectivity. In all this appears a more negative process, necessary to (dear the way for future development. The structure in its objectivity must first be cleansed of all the sensuous accessories with which Classical artistic will has contaminated it, and the structural forces must first be rallied, before the great artistic expression of the Middle Ages can be attained by these forces alone. Thus, Eomanesque architecture already brings out the structure, indeed, but does not yet intensify it ; the great pathos of the Gothic has not yet set in. The Eomanesque style is a Gothic minus enthusiasm, a Gothic still involved in material weight, a Gothic with- out final transcendental deliverance. It has fallen back upon logic, but does not yet thereby pursue a super- logical purpose. This seriousness which is in a large measure heaviness, this objectivity which is in a certain measure frugality, this show of agglomerate, retarding weight which has a ceremonial, but not transporting, effect, predestine the Eomanesque style to become the true Protestant German style, and it is, therefore, no accident that modern Protestant church architecture is fond of taking up the Eomanesque style again [PI. XXI, A]. The half-way and hybrid character that clings to Protestantism, the vacillation between rational, scholastic elements and metaphysical ele- ments, between rigorous subjection to the word and individual freedom — all this is reflected in the Eoman- esque style, too. It, too, is full of inner contradictions. It is half Gothic scaffolding already, half antique Plate XXP B. Modej^a Cathedral Inceptive Emancipation from the Classical. Ill masses still. Along with the most exacting regularity of ground-plan, it shows elsewhere a capriciousness, which leads Dehio to the conclusion that symmetry in its strictest form is thoroughly disagreeable to the Roman- esque, which, consequently, always breaks it more or less abruptly. In no style are strict rule and caprice so closely connected as in the Romanesque, in no religion are they so close together as in Protestantism. The German national character of the Romanesque style distinguishes it clearly from the international, universal Gothic. The Romanesque is the style of pre- dominantly Germanic lands, without much admixture; it is most firmly anchored in Normandy, Burgundy, Lombardy, and, finally, Germany proper. Its ef- florescence is closely connected with the great days of German imperial rule. With the faU of this imperial power its period of resplendence also ends. Complete Emancipation in the Pure Gothic E have seen how the northern Gothic form ener- ^ ^ gies already became independent in the Roman- esque style, how they steadfastly asserted their place beside the antique tradition. But we have seen also how they remained standing beside it, how they lacked the strength for the last step, for the full emancipation from antique tradition. This great and decisive act required an enthusiasm, an Man of the volition, such as the peoples of predominantly Germanic character did not, in their heaviness, foster. Their dull, chaotic bent remained traditional, remained materially bound. They lacked the great, decisive stimulus to free them- selves from this subjection; hence, the Romanesque style presents only the picture of suppressed, bound, restrained power. The start toward liberating this j^ower had to come from without. This function fell to the lot of Latin western Europe. It gave the irresolute northern artistic volition the great initiative that led it to full liberation. The Teutonic north, in its heaviness, has alwa^^s been incompetent to formulate independently what it has vaguely felt and wanted. It is always western Europe, dominated by Latin elements, that overthrows the law of northern sluggishness and in a great effervesence of its energies pronounces the word the Teutonic north has had on the tip of its tongue. In the heart of France, where Germanic and Latin elements interjienetrate most intimately, there the liber- ating deed was enacted, there the cue Avith which the Gothic proper commences was given. Latin enthusiasm, which can reach the highest nitch Avithout losing its clarity, discoAmred the clear formulation for the un- clear northern Amlition. In other Avords, it created the Gothic system. ( 112 ) Plate XXII. Salisbuey Cathedral Complete Emancipation in Pure Gothic. 113 In spite of this, France cannot be called the real mother country of the Gothic: the Gothic did not originate in France, only the Gothic system. For the Latin elements in the population, which endowed France with this power of initiative and this power of clear formulation, were what, on the other hand, also kept alive the connection with the antique tradition and its organically colored artistic will. After the first en- thusiasm had died out, after the Latin elements had by a great exertion, by a mighty achievement decisive for the whole Gothic, responded to the provocation which the Germanic north gave for the clear formula- tion of the Gothic train of ideas, their mission was, so to speak, fulfilled, and there set in a state of self- consciousness, during which Classical artistic feeling, which had been temporarily totally eclipsed by the great mediaeval task, loudly announced itself once more. Precisely in this land of happy miscegenation there was no permanent home for Gothic one-sidedness. The Latin joy in decorative finish, in sensuous clarity, and in organic harmony kept down too much the Ger- manic need of exaggeration and excess. Tims, it hap- pens that an unmistakable air of organically clarified Renaissance feeling hovers over even the most beauti- ful and most mature Gothic buildings in France [PI. XXV]. Full verticality is never reached, horizontal accents always keep the balance. Thus, one can say, of course, that France has created the most beautiful, most living Gothic huildings, but not the purest. The land of the unadulterated Gothic is the Germanic north. To that extent is justified the assertion we made at the beginning of our study that the true architectonic ful- filment of the northern form will exists in German Gothic. To be sure, English architecture, too, has undi- luted Grothic coloring [PI. XXII] ; to be sure, England, which is too firmly constituted and self-sufficient to have had its own artistic will so disorientated by the Renaissance as Germany’s, cultivates the Gothic even to this day as its national style. Yet this English Gothic is without the spontaneous elan of the German Gothic, without its strong pathos that breaks against obstacles 114 Fokm Problems of the Gothic. and becomes intensified. English Gothic is more re- served, one might almost say more phlegmatic; hence, it is apt to be in danger of appearing cold and sterile. Above all, it is more superficial, more amateurish than the German Gothic. What seems in the latter like inner necessity, seems in English Guthic like more or less capricious decoration. In spite of the indisputable fact that the Gothic was most firmly anchored among Germanically tinged populations and lasted longest there, one may well agree with Dehio when he says that the Gothic knew no exact national bounds but was a supernational and a temporal j)henomenon which is exactly characteristic of the late Middle Ages when the national differences melted away upder the glow of a consciousness of religious and ecclesiastical unity comprising all Europe. Interior Construction of the Cathedral S there not some analogy to the battle fought by A the church against natural man, when the Gothic forces the stone into a form in which it has apparently forgotten its weight, its brittleness, its natural tendency to lie down and has apparently assumed a higher, living nature? Is there not a very deliberate contra- diction of common experience, a yearning for miracu- lous effects, when the architect makes it the goal of his sagacity to render invisible all that gives solidity to the interior construction? Unquestionably, this whole phase of the Gothic, which determines the aesthetic impression, has nothing to do with that striving for structural verity whiich seems to dominate the Gothic. He who is unable to divine the copious elements of mysticism commingled with the calculation of its mas- ters, will also be unable to understand what they have to say as artists, that is, as true sons and legitimate spokesmen of their age.” We place these sentences of Dehio’s at the be- ginning of the chapter on the Gothic proper, because they so aptly hit the true character of all the technical progress of the Gothic, because they show us in ad- vance how the whole outlay of logical acuteness which the Gothic builders muster up serves, in the last analy- sis, only superlogieal purposes. There is scarcely anything new to add to the logical and psychological interpretation of the Gothic system, as it has been attempted by many others along with Dehio. So much that is ingenious and pro- found has already been said on this theme that the danger of unconscious plagiarism is scarcely avoidable. Further, we are actually less concerned in our study with this acme of the Gothic than with that latent Gothic which is already displayed in the whole series of pre- Gothic styles and the connection of which with the ( 115 ) 116 Form Problems of the .Gothic. Gothic in the narrower sense we wished primarily to show. We may, then, be brief. As we have seen, the Romanesque [Pis. XVIII, XX, and XXI] “was still a style of masses ; that is, the natural weight of the stone, its materiality was still the basis of the construction as well as of the aesthetic impression. Since this style had been formed under the suggestion handed down by that antique architec- tural feeling which had won from the material a life of organic expression, a certain process of disorganiza- tion of the material was necessary first of all to aL*- commodate it to the northern form will. What re- mained in the Romanesque style after this disorgani- zation was the material as such, the material which was non-sensualized hut not yet spiritualized. Exter- nal beginnings of the spiritualization, that is, of the division of the material into parts, of the release from it of active vital forces, were initiated already in the Romanesque style, but remained, as has been said, ex- ternal; they Avere not yet connected with the internal construction. We ascertained the first step toward this internal spiritualization in the rib construction of cross- vaulting. It Avas the first step into the , Gothic proper when these ribs relinquished their character as mere mimic enchancement of expression in order to take over the static control of the vault and consequently to become agents of expression and of function at the same time. The development beginning here was first brought, however, to a more important and more sweeping re- sult by the introduction of the pointed arch. It is interesting that a form Avhich but outwardly taken, Avith its strongly accented expression of homo- geneous upward action, is a sort of brief linear diagram of the mediaeval aspiration for transcendence and, by the same tokens, of the Gothic longing for expression, that a form which for these reasons repeatedly, doubtless only on decorative, external grounds, found recep- tion in the system of architecture should very quickly manifest a structural use which at a stroke cleared the way for the still structurally impeded Gothic form will. Plate XXIII. A. S. Makia jMaggioke. Ro^ie C. S. Apollixare IX Cr.A.s.SE D. Ului Cathedral ■ •; •ii':'' ' A ?S Intekioe, Construction of the Cathedral. 117 Only because the decorative significance of the pointed arch so coincides with its structural significance, did it attain to the standing of the standard criterion of the Gothic style. Wherefore, the incomparably more important intrinsic significance was, it is true, usually overlooked because of the more obtrusive extrinsic sig- nificance. The structural advantages, also, of the pointed arch were, of course, known long before. The pointed arch is as old as the art of vaulting itself. To that extent, therefore, one cannot speak of an invention on the part of the Gothic. But certainly the Gothic alone has made it and its structural significance the basis of a whole system maintained with the utmost consistency throughout. As long as the round arch was held to, it was tech- nically difficult to vault any but square compartments. For equal heights at the crown resulted only from equal spans of pillar intervals. Thus, that limitation of the ground-plan to squares became necessary which surely gave the Romanesque building a very serious and ceremonial appearance, but, on the other hand, hindered the vertical expanse from running unbroken through side aisles and main aisle as the northern architectural will desired. For two small square bays of the side aisle must always be arranged beside one of the main aisle [PI. XXI, B anl PI. XXIII, B]. An intimate connection of the vaulting of the side aisle with that of the main aisle was, therefore, unattainable. The rhythm of the main aisle was different from that of the side aisles. Wliere the main aisle took a long step, the side aisles took two short ones. Accordinsrly, they only ran along beside each other, not together. Their only common char- acteristic lay in the forward movement, not in the up- ward movement. Xow since this upward expansion was the real goal of the northern architectural will, it is evi- dent how much it suffered from that limitation to squares, which held back pnecisely the homogeneous up- ward expansion of the building. The Early Christian basilica had the altar as its object [PI. XIV, C and PI. XXIII, A and C]. In it the 118 Form Problems of the Gothic. whole attention was directed to this terminus of the movement, the altar, by energetic, compulsory force of line. The Gothic cathedral, too, knows a compulsory force of line. But the direction is different. It is the unreal line into vanishing height toward which all powers and activity are directed. The basilica had a definite goal. The Gothic cathedral has an indefinite one. Its movement dies away in infinity. Now since in both architectural tendencies the specifications of the cult in general, and therefore the practical spatial needs as well, remain the same, the Gothic upward expansion can he evolved only beside, only in spite of, this longi- tudinal extension which the cult demands. The longi- tudinal extension of the building is, therefore, kept by the oblong ground-plan of the whole. Now w^hile the rigid Romanesque system, with its rhythmically inex- pressive squares, which were indecisive in their indica- tion of dirdction, could not yet counteract this longi- tudinal extension of the whole with any equivalent vertical expansion, the , Gothic system, by means of the pointed arch and its structural use, is able to make this great oblong of the whole ground-plan (against which the Romanesque square bay, despite all vaulting, was helpless) vanish into a system of compartments likewise oblong but ordinarily not hung parallel to the oblong of the total ground-plan,, but perpendicular to it [PI. XXIII, D and PI. XXIV] . The effect of these compartments is to paralyze the exclusively longitudinal extension of the building and to introduce an equivalent latitudinal extension, which in connection with the results already attained in vaulting lead to a homogeneous upward ex- pansion. The oblong shape of the total ground-plan is now actually advantageous to this vertical expansion. For it characterizes the whole building with an aspira- tion for height, which acquires redoubled dynamics be- cause of the relatively narrow lateral limits. This possibilty of a vertical expanse which runs un- broken across the whole building, including main aisle and side aisles as well— of the so-called Gothic travee — results first, as has been said, from the pointed arch and its structural consequences. For the adaptable pointed Plate XXIV. Ulm Catiiedr.\l '‘r '-in , '. ■ l-«= ' - "i/«; /■* Interior Construction of the Cathedral. 119 arch has first made it possible to get equal crown heights even with unequal pillar intervals, that is, over oblong compartments. The clumsy ratio 1 : 2 oil the bays of the vaulting of the main aisle to those of the side aisles disappears; main and side aisles get the same number of intimately, mutually related vaults; they do not run along beside each other any more toward a fixed goal in the longitudinal dimension, but they rise together in the vertical dimension. The primary accent of the whole building falls, therefore, on the main aisle and its heavenward leaping movement; everything else is subordinate, ever^dhing else dependent. The side aisles, which still functioned in the Eomanesque style as independent, coordinate units of space, now get their aesthetic meaning only from the movement struck in the main aisle, which they subserve merely as arses, so to speak. If this arsis is strengthen- ed by the introduction of two additional side aisles [PL XXIV], that only corresponds to the truly Gothic need of piling up single effects to increase the total impression. The richer treatment of the prelude de- prives the theme of the whole building — the movement of the main aisle [PI. I] — of none of its force; on the contrary, its great, strong lines are only the more power- ful and forceful after the syncopation-like protraction that the side aisles give. Through the introduction of the pointed arch into the construction of vaulting that process of demateriali- zation of the body of the building which was already be- gun in the Eomanesque is completed. The Eomanesque style only achieved an outward separation of the stati- cally active and the space-enclosing elements; now the Gothic entirely rejects the merely space-enclosing mem- bers and constructs the whole building of statically ac- tive members alone. Already in the Eomanesque period this tendency displayed itself in the strengthening of the ribs of the vault, in the separation of the static control of the rib-work from the functionless filling of the sectroids. The pressure was concentrated upon the four corner pillars on which the vaulting was built and the wall between the pillars was thereby disburdened. 120 I’oRM Problems of the Gothic. It was the first step in the direction of the complete dissolution of the wall. This had already become in large measure functionless filling like the sectroids. But the strong lateral thrust that the round arches still exercised on the pillars continued to impose upon the latter, for the time being, a massiveness which allowed the Eomanesque no ultimate escape from the wall and which, therefore, strikes the Gothic form will as some- thing to be overcome. The introduction of the pointed arch in vaulting construction first gives the Gothic architect the chance to carry out his aspiration for a building with taut sinews and pliant members, and with- out any superfluous flesh or any superfluous mass. For the much slighter lateral thrust of ogival vaulting per- mits a higher and juore slender treatment of the sup- porting pillars, and thus first makes possible that thorough breaking up of the static construction, and that expression, consonant with Gothic demands, of delicate, flexible, and unencumhered action. It is as if, now — with the introduction of the pointed arch — a great self- consciousness went through the building. The cue seems to be given that lets its pent-up need of activity, its predisposition to express pathos, take the stage. The whole building strains itself in the joyous consciousness of being freed at last from all material weight, from all terrestrial limitations. The pillars grow high, slender, and supple ; the vaulting loses itself in dizzy heights. And yet everything is subservient to this vaulting carried far aloft. For its sake only the building seems to exist. The vaulting already begins at the foundation of the building, as it were. All the great and small vaulting-shafts, which spring up from the floor and like living forces invest the pillars, appear both structurally and aesthetically as mere preparation for the vault. With lithe strength they fly up from the floor to fade away gradually in an easy movement. The movement pressing on from both sides is unified in the crown of the vault by a keystone, which, in spite of the actual weight demanded by its structural function as abutment, makes no aesthetic impression of weight and appears, rather, a natural termination, light as a flower. Interior Construction op the Cathedral. 121 111 the description of this Gothic interior construc- tion our terminology has unintentionally altered. It has assumed a wholly different and more sensuous tone. We are now talking of lithe, living forces, of taut sinews, of flower-like tenninations. Is the abstract, the super- organic, the mechanical quality of Gothic activity, in the sense in which we have identified it as the basis of northern form will, not compromised by such epithets taken over from the conception of the organic? We must enter into this question, because the answer shows that the northern artistic volition aims only at strongly expresS'We activity and that it resorts to the above- mentioned abstract, mechanical activity because the latter is far superior in strength of expression to or- ganic activity, which is always tied down to organic har- mony and caters, consequently, rather to the beauty than to the power of expression. (In a similar way a me- chanically regulated marionette is more strongly ex- pressive than a living actor.) The answer further shows, on the other hand, that, where the Gothic artistic will is withheld by outer circumstances from the ab- stract means of expression, it raises the organic means of expression to such a degree that they approximate the forcefuliiess of mechanical expression. The Gothic architect is placed in this position when he comes to the interior construction of his cathedrals. The Gothic master is not purely a master of tectonics, like the Greek. He is, rather, a builder of interior space who continues, and gives the final touch to, that great process of spiritualizing the sensibilities which began in Hellenistic times. Space is no longer a mere con- comitant of a purely tectonic process, but it is the primary thing, it is the immediate point of departure of the artistic conception of building. For the Gothic architect it is only a question of getting from the space an expressional life corresponding to the ideal aims of his artistic creation. Now space, in and of itself, is something spiritual and incomprehensible. In this, its essence, it there- fore eludes every formative power which is creative of expression. For a thing we cannot comprehend we can- 122 Form Problems of the Gothic. not express either. Space we can comprehend only if we take away its abstract character, if we, by a substitution, present it to ourselves as something- cor- poreal — in short, if we transform the experience of space into an experience of the senses and the abstract space into real, atmospheric space. Abstract space has no life, and no creative power can get any expression from it; but atmospheric space has an intrinsic life that directly atfects our senses and thereby offers our formative power a hold. In this matter of building space the Gothic bent for spiritualization, therefore, finds itself placed in a sphere of organic and sensuous expression. Its proper sphere, the non-sensuous, is closed to it; accordingly, it has only the alternative of metamorphosing the sensuous into the 5iipersensuous. A supersensuous effect must be got from the sensuous experience of space; that is to say, the means of sensuous expression must be intensified so as to produce a supersensuous impression. Here, again, the inner connection of Gothic and Baroque makes its appearance. For it is just this same Gothic mediaeval form will that spends its fury in the sensuous pathos of the Baroque after its proper means of expression, the abstract and the superorganic, have been taken away by the Eenaissance. Thus, the Baroque is characterized by the sensuous become supersensuous, the same as is the spatial effect of the Gothic. This specific characteristic of Gothic space creation and space feeling becomes particularly clear if one re- calls the healthy, lucid, sculptural quality of space in Roman architecture, as expressed in the Pantheon, for instance [PI. XIX]. One finds no pathos here. The lucidity of the spatial picture checks all supersensuous, mystic feeling. The Roman form will, with its Classical stamp, only sought to give the space an organically independent and harmonically completed and satisfied life. When one enters the Pantheon, he feels he is freed from his individual isolation. The mute, ceremonial music of space moves him to a comforting, refreshing, sensuous self-communion; he joins in the swing of the Interior Construction of the Cathedral. 123 unspeakably pleasant rhythm of the life of space; he feels sensuously clarified. And what but this sublime happiness of ideal sensuous clarification does Classical man want in his whole art! But when one enters a Gothic cathedral [PI. I], he experiences something different from a, sensuous clarification. He experiences an intoxication of the senses, not that direct, gross intoxication of the senses that the Baroque produces, but a mystic one, not of this world. Gothic space is unbridled activity. Its effect is not ceremonial and calm, but overpowering. It does not receive the visitor with gentle mien, but carries him away by force, operates as a mystic compulsion, un- resisting submission to which seems bliss to the over- wrought soul. This deafening by the fortissimo of the music of space just exactly suits Gothic religion and its mania for redemption. We are here remote from any Classical world. To be put in a religious and ceremonial mood Classical man only asked for clarity of space. His religious and artistic contentment were closely de- pendent on harmony and balance. Even as a builder of space he remained a sculptor. On the contrary, only the pathos of space can put Gothic man in a religious mood. Only this quality of pathos raises him above his earthly limitations and his inner misery; only in this ecstasy, carried to self-annihilation, is he able to feel the touch of the eternal. So even as builder of space his inherent dualism commits him to trans- cendentalism, to mysticism. While Classical man sought only sensuous self-communion, he seeks sensuous self- oblivion, seeks through self-abandonment to lay hold of the supersensuous. The Gothic architect lends no ear to the latent requirements of atmospheric space for salutary, rhyth- mic boundary. Because of his morbidly excited need of expression he offers violence, rather, to atmospheric life. Where the Classical architect only hearkened to it and obeyed it as an understanding servant, he actively opposes it. He pens it up, hie gives it hindrance after 124 Form Problems of the Gothic. hindrance and stubbornly gets from it by force an entirely distinct rhythmic movement which is augmented to the utmost momentum and has as its goal infinite height. Eebuffed on all sides, shattering on a thousand- obstacles, the atmospheric life of the whole interior space leads a vehemently agitated, restless existence until it finally with almost audible roar breaks against the vaulted ceiling. There a kind of whirlwind is engendered which blows irresistibly upward. If one is at all sensible of space, he never steps into the great Gothic cathedrals without feeling a dizziness be- cause of the space. It is the same feeling of dizziness which exhales from the chaotic tangle of lines in early northern ornament. Plus ga change, plus ga reste la meme chose. The sensuous experience of space prescribes the organically rounded shape of the architectural elements with which the space is articulated. Everything hard, angular, discordant with the life of atmospheric space has to he avoided. The sensuous conception of space is transferred to the system of its division. The vault- ing-shafts and ribs which pilot the course of the sensu- ous experience are made either round or semicircular; they have organic expressional value as has the spatial life they serve. But here, too, the transition from sensuous to supersensuous soon occurs; that is, the architectural members continue constantly to lose their corporeally material content and to become bearers of abstract expression. This process is accomplished by a conscious transformation of the profiles. The first stage gives them a pear-shaped section. By this pear-shaped section an already more linear, abstract expression be- comes dominant within their very corporeal character. The entire elimination of any suggestions of bodily expression then follows in the second stage : the profiles become concave so that there only remains framed in on either side by deep shadow’s a slender fillet, which finally substitutes for the bodily tangible function a pure- ly spiritual, intangible expressiveness. Thus, the artistic treatment in this case, too, leads in the end to non- Interior Construction of the Cathedral. 125 sensuous mimicry which is free of all structural purposes and seems to exist only for its own sake, a mimicry which gives expression to no corporeal forces, but to spiritual energies. So even here where an organically rounded and corporeally firm treatment of the archi- tectural members is indispensable because of the un- avoidable sensuous conception of space on the one hand and because of the inevitable static conditions on the other, we observe how the Gothic need of spiritual ex- pression has its way and spiritualkes the material by a refined process of dematerialization. Exterior Construction of the Cathedral Gothic cathedral is the most striking and com- ^ plete representation of the mediaeval mind. Mysti- cism and scholasticism, these two great mediaeval vital forces which, generally appear incompatihle op- posites, are closely united in it and grow directly out of each other. As the room within is wholly mysticism, the construction without is wholly scholasticism. It is their common transcendentalism of movement that unites them, the same transcendentalism but served by different means of expression, in the one case by organic, sensuous means, in the other case by abstract, mechanical means. The mysticism of the interior is merely a scholasticism deepened and rendered organic and sensuous. It was Gottfried Semper, with his Classical pre- possession, who first coined the term' “petrified scho- lasticism,,’’ and he thought to discredit the Gothic there- by. But this criticism, exactly to the point, can signify a condemnation of the Gothic only to one who is incap- able of surve3dng the great mediaeval phenomenon of scholasticism because of the narrowness of his modem one-sided outlook. We wish to get away from this modern one-sidedness of judgment concerning scho- lasticism and try to offer in place of a modern and rel- ative evaluation a positive interpretation. For the pres- ent, we desire to witness how this northern predispo- sition to scholasticism has evinced itself in architecture. In ancient architecture, as far as this had anything to do with spatial artistic problems, and in all styles dependent upon it, hence, especially in the Komanesque, the construction of the exterior revealed itself as the outer complement of the inner enclosure of space. Now we have seen that in the Gothic style the proper space- enclosing factors, that is, the firm Avails, haAm been dis- solved and the structural and aesthetic functions haAm dcAmlved upon the individual static forces of the con- ( 126 ^ Exterior Construction of the Cathedral, 127 struction. This fundamental alteration of the architectur- al conception is l)ound to exercise its natural reaction upon the treatment of the exterior. Outside, the firm, closed walls must also he suppressed, the process of emancipating the individual forces must also win its way through. We have seen how the process of articulating the expressionless exterior wall with pilaster strips and arcading commenced already in the Eomanesque style. But the active forces that there enlivened the wall and made it expressive had only decorative significance, for they did not yet stand in any immediate, visible con- nection with the inner construction. Outer forces were speaking, not the immanent forces active in the build- ing itself. The language of construction was yet un- discovered, and to it alone was reserved the possibility of fully expressing the Gothic will. The configuration of the interior, as we saw it take shape in consequence of the tendency to vaulting, gave the cue to rouse and make independent on the exterior construction, also, the immanent active forces. With the disburdening of the walls as carriers of the vaulting and with the con- centration of the pressure on single, specially accented points the necessity of buttressing arose automatically just as it arose and was solved under similar circum- stances in other architectural styles. The Gothic but- tress system is nothing new structurally, yet it is new in that it is made visible instead of being concealed, as elsewhere, by the walling in of the whole. With this making it visible first conies the aesthetic emphasis of a structural necessity; that is, the Gothic longing for expression has discovered in this structural necessity opportunity for aesthetic expression, as well, and with that has found the categorical principle of the exterior treatment of the building. Here, too, it is the introduction of the pointed arch that resolves the still hesitant and groping voli- tion and causes the system to be consistently carried through. For only with the introduction of the pointed arch does the vaulting of the middle aisle reach its 128 Form Problems of the Gothic. full height and only then do the corresponding pillars acquire their extreme slenderness, which, in spite of the relative lightness of the burden, involves the dan- ger of collapse. The resultant necessity of making sup- ports possible at certain points and, besides, at a height where the low side aisles demanded by the Goth- ic emphasis of the middle aisle can no longer be made to take in the sup})orting members, leads to a but- tressing which projects free in the air away over the side aisleS' — leads, that is, to an avowed displaj^ of the individual static powers that make up the struc- ture of the whole building [PI. XXV]. With a grand, energetic gesture the flying but- tresses transmit the vaulting thrust of the central aisle to the massive buttress pillars of the side aisles. To make it easier for them firmly to withstand the lat- eral pressure of the burden, they are loaded on top with pinnacles. The structural significance of this buttress system is intelligible, therefore, only when one follows it out from the top downwards. For the aesthetic im- pression, however, the opposite direction is what counts, from the bottom upwards. We see how the heavenward aspiring energies free themselves from the power reservoir of the buttress pillars to attain their goal of height in a mighty exhibition of mechanical power. This movement from the buttress pillars along the fly- ing buttresses to the clerestory of the middle aisle is of a compelling mimic power. All means are taken to force the observer to this aesthetic conception, which is the reverse of the structural conception of the but- tressing system. For example, the pinnacles do not give the effect of a burden upon the buttress pillars, l)ut of an excess of their upward impulse that frees itself and already impatiently flies up before the real goal of the upward movement is attained. From this seemingly vain extravagance of power in the pinnacles the buttress movement which after this delay goes on with certainty, conscious of its purpose, then re- ceives a yet more imposing and more convincing ex- pressiveness. s BlOAUVAtS Catiikdhal '1 • ■ ■ - '■ -■-■ : •;■.;■ • ' • ■•■ ■■ ^ -V" -■' vm ‘.■'V ^-'. ■: >Ji-^, i k' ' 7 %^ , - - r-’ .Mi^.vtrjBSiiSa'>A..,s. Z/iL /- '-'X w.. m&m Extepjor Construction op tite Cathedral. 129 While the mere structural fact is that the secrets of the free, elastic, structurally iucomprehensible form of the Gothic interior betray themselves to one stepping outside by a painstaking support and crutch-work, on which the building must lean in order to produce its spatial effect, and while, therefore, in structure the exterior is a disillusioning unmasking of the baffling treatment of the interior, the aesthetic impression which is suggested to the observer in every way is that the upward movement of the interior is only repeated by this arrangement of the exterior. The intangible rhyth- mic movement of the interior seems to be petrified with- out. The upward aspiring forces, that have not yet come to rest on the inside, seem on the outside to strive, after freeing themselves from all limitation and constraint, to lose themselves in infinity. With ever renewed beginnings they multiply about the kernel of the interior to aspire away beyond it into infinity. A sort of exterior travee is effected. There now becomes visible on the exterior of the building also a stretching that runs uniformly through side aisles and main aisle toward an ideal height. The same transcen- dental expressional movement that speaks in the in- terior with pliant, supple lines, speaks here with a harsh, mechanically and prodigiously expressive ac- tivity that unites thousands of forces to an identical purpose. We have seen how in the configuration of the in- terior the upward expansion is still restricted by the old basilica! scheme, which, because of the cult, places its interest in the sanctuary. This movement exactly pointed toward the altar is too circumscribed for the propensity of Gothic man to ideal movement. He seeks to counteract this longitudinal movement by a ver- tical expansion that opens for him the way to the boundless. The travees are applied like brakes on the longitudinal movement to divert its forces upward. But all this upward expansion in the interior still lacks the final consummation. It remains onl^^ counter- movement, not conquest. It cannot autonomously pro- vide the decisive accent, for this accent has been pre- 130 Foem Problems of the Gothic. scribed for it by the oiilt. The interior can and will not break away from the altar. Now the Gothic architect makes np outside for this limitation inside. Outside he can let the Gothic form will speak, released from all considerations of cult. And the result is the perfection of the towers as principal accent of the whole exterior [PI. XXYT]. The emancipation from the old basilical scheme and from its movement toward the altar is here completely ac- complished to the benefit of an ideal development of height. A directly opposite movement is thereby ex- pressed. For on the exterior the nave acts only as preparation, only as arsis, for the great triumphant movement of the towers. All the exertions that are involved in the buttress system of the nave first give the light, natural upward growth of the towers its final dynamic quality. All the toiling and struggling of the individual forces on the exterior is gathered up and combined, as it were, in order to achieve its delivering utterance in the ideal non-purposive architectural form of the towers. The towers finish off the whole building as an apotheosis-like glorification of Gothic transcen- dentalism and there is no stone in them but serves the whole. Nowhere is the Gothic ‘‘auto-intoxication with logical formalism” more purely expressed than here, but, also, nowhere is the superlogical, transcendental effect of this logical multiplicity more monumentally and more convincingly recorded. A critic with Classical bias has no eye for this superlogical effect; he sees only the means and overlooks the end. He sees only the outlay of logical keenness and does not gi'asp the superlogical reason for this outlay. In short, this petri- fied scholasticism can only seem to him madness with method in it. But whoever has recognized the Gothic form will, whoever has traced it from the chaotic en- tanglement of the early ornament up to the artful chaos of this exhibition of power in stone, has his Classical standards shattered by the grandeur of this expression, and he darkly apprehends the mighty medi- aeval mental world which is torn by extremes and is therefore capable of supernatural exertions. And Plate XXVI. Ulm CatHE'DBAL ’ 'rf - .^~- '• '-S- •''; '■ ■• ; ..SV T-. ...t r r# ,-r '^■' *; ■ A'" : . \ #*. - • * ' '’r'ii " '.is V , •■»”< « ,.■ ';Si 'If. vi '.-^ S; ^ V'.' •• #tr Exterior Construction of the Cathedral. 131 as long as he stands under the overwhelming impres- sion of this sublime hysteria of the Gothic, he is al- most inclined to be unjust toward the healing process of the Eenaissance, which has reduced the feverish Gothic mental life to a normal— one might almost say bourgeois - — temperature and which has substituted for the grandeur of pathos the ideal of beauty and serene calm. We were just speaking of the architectonic multi- plicity revealed in the construction of the system of towers. It was the same quality of multiplication that we identified in the early ornament. There, too, we saw, in contrast to the quality of addition shown by Classical ornament, that the individual motive was mul- tiplied by itself. And here, in the architecture, also, the exponent of this mathematical evolution is infinity and gives, as result of the logical process, a chaotic con- fusion. Gothic man seeks to lose himself, not only in the infinity of the large, but also in the infinity of the small. The infinity of movement which gets macrocosmic ex- pression in the architectonic form of the whole, gets microcosmic expression in every smallest architectural detail. Every single part is a world for itself, re- plete with perplexing agitation and illiniitability. It repeats in miniature, but with the same means, the ex- pression of the Avhole. It demands the same unre- sisting surrender and produces the same effect of stupefaction. A pinnacle tip is a diminutive cathedral [PI. XXVII, A]. In pondering over the artful chaos of a tracery [PI. XX V] one can experience in a small way the same intoxication with logical formalism as in the whole architectural system. The unity of the form will and its thorough execution is amazing. We must not conclude this investigation of Gothic architecture, which is surely not exhaustive, ’without making one particular point clear. We have inten- tionally avoided citing for example or for proof any specific building of the Gothic epoch. Just as little have we entered into the details of the different periods of the Gothic proper. A purely psychological invest!- 132 Fob.m Problems of the Gothic. gation of stjde can keep in mind, rather, only the ideal type, perhaps never realized, but hovering as immanent goal before all real endeavors. Therefore, we are not here concerned with this or that monument of Gothic- architecture but with the idea of the Gothic, which we have sought by means of the knowledge of the charac- teristic Gothic form will to distill from the richly varied and nnanced fullness of its embodiment. Plate XXVII. A. Pinnacle Tip op’ La Sainto Chappxle, Pahis. B. Late Gothic Capital (Metropolitoi Museum of Art. Neiv York) The Psychology of Scholasticism O CHOLASTICISM is in the field of religion what Gothic architecture is in the field of art. It is an equally eloquent document of the sublime hysteria of the Middle Ages, and it has been misjudged in the same way through the application of a false standard. The misunderstandings in regard to scholasticism are just like those in regard to Gothic architecture. In the former, too, people have been wont to see a display of logical acumen, the inner surperlogical pur- pose of which they did not grasp. Thus, they have only caught at the outer purpose of scholastic thinking, namely, at the intention of giving the system of ecclesi- astical dogmas a rational justification. In a tone of reproach they have declared that scholasticism did not intend to find unknown, new truth but was satisfied to support with reasons and prove rational the truth already at hand, as it was contained in the theological and philosophical system of the church — which inwardly rested upon divine manifestation, outwardly upon the authority of Aristotle. They have said that scholasti- cism was only a handmaid of theology, that the whole display of logical acuteness was, therefore, determined only by the complexity o|f thpi problem, which con- sisted precisely in bringing into touch with the intel- lect even matters of revelation and belief which eluded direct intellectual explanation and justification. They have said that that had led to the logical subtlety, to the tortuous, sophistic dialectics of scholasticism. Peo- ple saw in scholastic thinking only the hair-splitting arguments and logical manoeuvres of an advocate who would save a lost case by every logical artifice. On the contrary, anyone who has recognized that secret scholasticism which, in the peculiarly involved, restless, and complicated course of northern thought in general, betrayed itself long before the historical scholasticism proper and without any connection with the Christian doctrine of salvation, anv one who has (Vd-S) 134 Form Problems of the Gothic. recognized, for instance, the connection of the involved dialectics of scholasticism with the enigmatic ques- tions, “this favorite form of Germanic dialogue” (Lamprecht), and with their involved activity spum- ing all clearness and directness, is driven to a view of scholasticism that entirely neglects its outer, theologi- cal purpose and focuses only upon the character of the thinking. As in these enigmatic questions and answers the outlay of logic and acuinen has no relation at all to the immediate cause or result, likewise, in scho- lasticism proper the direct theological {purpose is scarcely considered as compared to the joy in a cer- tain turned and twisted movement of the thinking as such. As one speaks of the artistic form will, one might speak of a spiritual form will, that is, of the will for a definite form of thinking, which exists quite inde- pendently of the special problem. The object of the thinking would, therefore, be scarcely considered here in comparison with the definite propensity to activity of the spirit. As an artistic structural and architec- tural fury, far exceeding all practical requirements, has seized on northern man, so, too, there has seized on him a spiritual structural fury, which betrays the same need to be absorbed in an original activity of ab- stract, that is, of logical or else of mechanical sort. Northern intellect did not have primarily a bent for knowledge but for activity. It evinced this bent for activity at first without direct purpose : this was, as it were, the ornamental stage of thought, such as appeared in the above-mentioned enigmatic questions and in a thousand other forms. Now as in art, the development of architecture imposed a direct task upon the northern propensity to purely ornamental form • — and indeed a task which did not evolve from within but was proposed from without, namely, the elabora- tion of the antique basilical scheme— likewise in spir- itual respects, the reception of Christianity and the consequences thereof set a task for the purely playful ornamental thinking, a task proposed to it from with- out, in the solution of which it manifested its high- est ability. And just as the Gothic cathedral far out- The Psychology of Scholasticism. 135 grows its immediate purpose, the creation of space, and creates in the tower construiction of the exterior a monu- ment that attains nearlj^ the same stage of an ideal pur- poselessness as was presented in the ornament, like- wise, scholastic thinking grows far beyond the immedi- ate cause of its application and becomes an autonomous manifestation of nonpurposive, abstract movement of thought. It cannot be said, therefore, that the scholastic wishes to approach the divine through intellectual knowledge. He wishes, rather, to partake of the divine through the manner of his thinking, through this chaotic, and yet in its logic so artful, confusion of the move- ment of his thought. The abstract progress of his think- ing, and not its result, gives him that feeling of spirit- ual intoxication which brings him stupefaction and de- liverance. It is similar to the abstract progress of the line, such as he has made visible in his ornament. It is similar to the abstract progress of petrified ener- gies, such as he has made msible in his architecture. There is one definite form will which governs all these utterances and in spite of their technical difference links them together as similar resultant phenomena. There is the same auto-intoxication with logical formal- ism, the same expenditure of rational means for a su- perrational purpose, the same madness with method in it, the same artful chaos. And to this similarity of re- sults must correspond a community of premise. This common premise is precisely pothic transcendentalism, which, emerging from an unpurified and unclarified dualism, can find satisfaction and deliverance only in hysterical emotions, in convulsive flights, in exaggera- tions of pathos. We see, therefore, that in mediaeval philosophy all is bound to the abstract active process of thinking in the same way that in mediaeval painting all is bound to the abstract line and its inherent expression. As in mediaeval painting everything that is represented is merged in the higher life of tflie means by which it is represented; so in scholastic philosophy all direct pur- pose of knowledge is mieirged in the higher life of the 136 Form Problems of the Gothic. means of knowledge and their autonomous activity. It is a catastrophe that disorientates and side-tracks all mediaeval thinking when the Eenaissance degrades thinking, which was until then an end in itself, into mere means to an end, namely, to knowledge of ex- traneous scientific truth, when the purpose of knowl- edge becomes everything and its process nothing. Then, thinking loses its abstract autonomy and becomes ser- vile; it becomes the slave of truth. Formerly, it was practiced almost without object and found its delight in its own activity alone, for the belief in revealed divine truth really spared it any craving for actual knowledge, directed toward the unknown. But now an actual ob- ject, truth, is set before it, now it is required to give up its autonomy and be absolutely regulated from the standpoint of the object. In short, it is condemned to mere intellectual tracing of truth, that is, of objective facts, just as is, in painting, the line, that once, likewise, lived only by means of inherent expression and now un- der the same circumstances also loses its autonomous, arabesque character to become an enclosing contour, a copy of the world of natural forms, a mere servant of the objective. As t]ie new Eenaissance concept of scien- tific truth is bound to experiment, so the new Eenais- sance concept of artistic truth is bound to anatomical study. In both cases objective truth has become the ideal, and that means that firm anchorage has been found in this world. Transcendentalism in intellectual and artistic creation has come to an end. The Eenais- sance brings the great healing process, the great process of making the sensibilities bourgeois, which roots out all mediaeval abnormalities and for the power of the supernatural substitutes the beauty of the natural. The Psychology of Mysticism A S mysticism and scholasticism are inextricably com- bined in the Gothic cathedral, as in it they grow immediately out of each other, so, too, in historical fact they are very closely related and intertwined. What unites them, what makes them phenomena of like quality, is their transcendental character. What differ- entiates them is the dissimilarity of their means of ex- pression, which, of course, is not accidental but has its good reasons, which grow out of important changes in the mental life of northern humanity, and which must therefore occupy us in this connection. Just as we are conscious of the interior of the Gothic minster as a sensuously instigated supersensuous experience, which contrasts in its whole nature with the abstract expressional world of Gothic exterior archi- tecture and with the means by which the latter affects us, so we are conscious also of the difference between mysticism and scholasticism shown by the contrast of the more sensuous coloring of mysticism with the ab- stract, non-sensuous nature of scholasticism. Instead of intellectual exaltation in which the religious feeling of scholasticism tries to find its certainly of salvation, in mysticism we see ecstasy of sense determine the re- ligious experience. Mental ecstasy becomes psychical ecstasy. Psychical experience, however, is, like spatial experience, something remote from all that is mental or abstract, something that is nourished directly by our senses. For what we call psychical is only the enhance- ment and refinement of the sensuous feeling into the sphere of the supersensuous. Now if it is no longer the mind that soars upward toward God, as in scho- lasticism but the soul, this is as much as to say that an increase in sensuousness has entered into religious life. In consequence of the whole character of the ques- tion governing our investigation this increase in sen- ( 137 ) 138 Fokm Problems of the Gothic. suoiis feeling- is an unusually important phenomenon, from ■which "we may draw decisive conclusions. For -wherever we trace a growth of sensous feeling in the inner developmental process of humanity, we know that a mitigation of the initialh* abruptly dualistic relationship of man and outer world has gone so far that the individual man dares dissever himself from the mass and face the outer world alone. For abstractness of feeling is nothing but the result of mass cohesion. The coherent mass, yet unditferentiated individually, necessarily feels abstractly, for its clinging together, its fear of losing its cohesion, means preciseh- that it is still so overshadowed by a dualistic anxiety and con- sequently by a desire of deliverance that only the su- perhuman, invariable character of abstract values can bring it rest and satisfaction. Mass feeling and abstract feeling are but two terms for the same thing. And it is the same tautology to say that with the growth of individual consciousness abstractness of feeling re- laxed and turned into sensuousness. For the abstract sigmihes the impersonal, the superpersonal, and, as such, the expression of the unditferentiated mass; but sen- suous feeling is inseparably bound to the process of human individualization and can belong only to single personalities. The man detached from the mass will necessarily feel sensuously and naturally, because his detachment from the mass indicates precisely that the dualism has to a certain degree vanished and that a certain sense of unity between man and outer world has come. To be sure, the mass can feel sensuously, too, but only the mass that is composed of single person- alities, not the individually unditferentiated mass which underlies mediaeval feeling. The dualistic relationship of fear between man and outer wmrld must first be dissolved, the instinctive con- sciousness of the unfathoma,bleness of existence must first be -svashed away, before man can dare to face alone this existence, that is, the infinite phenomenal world. The growing sense of personality indicates the dechne of broad cosmic sense. Thus, we see that the Orient has never taken part in the European process of individual- The Pyschology op Mysticism. 139 izatioii. Its cosmic sense, that is, its awareness of the deception of the phenomenal world and of the unfath- omahleness of existence, is too firmly anchored in its instinct. Therefore, its feeling and its art remain ab- stract. But in the development of northern man, who was only dualistically troubled, not dualistically chas- tened, the increasing outer confidence has led to a noticeable mitigation of the dualism and, consequently, to a certain kind of individualization, the mixed, in- complete character of which we cannot fail to see, but which is, none the less, significant for such an increase of sensuous feeling as we can find in mysticism. In mysticism we observe that the personal, psychical ex- perience has become the channel of divine knowledge, and this shiows us right away that in the relationship of northern man to the world a change of temperature has occurred, that this relationship has gained in warmth and intimacy. It is something entirely new and stupendous in mediaeval ideas that the divine is no longer sought in non-sensuous abstractions, which lie beyond all that is earthly and human, in a realm of supernatural invariables, but in the center of the ego, in the mirror of self -contemplation, in the intoxication of psychical ecstasy. It is an entirely new human self- consciousness, an entirely new human pride, that deems the poor human ego worthy to become the vessel of God. Thus, mysticism is nothing but the belief in the divinity of the human soul, for the soul can look upon God only because divine itself. “The soul as microtheos, as God in miniature — therein lies the solution of eveiy enigma of mysticism” (Windelband). How far is such a self-centered standpoint from all Oriental trans- cendentalism, how far from the latter is the belief that the human, the limited, the contingent could so broaden itself as to partake of the divine, the unlimited, the absolute ! The Oriental knows that he can never, in his finiteness, look upon God. His God lives only in what is beyond man. As to the mystic, however, none of his self-renunciation conceals the fact that he thinks to partake of the beyond already in this world. Since he compresses the great beyond, the beyond that lies 140 Form Problems of the Gothic. outside all that is human and living, into a personal be- yond, that is, a beyond that is attainable through mere self -negation, and since he thus descends from world- negation to self-negation, he unconsciously approaches the present world and its sensuous sphere. Of the sense of the transcendental there has come about a dissolution, which expresses itself all manner of ways in the nature of mysticism. The principle of divine transcendence gradually submerges into the idea of divine immanence. Mysticism has got so close to earth that it no longer believes the divine is outside the world, but in the world, that is, in the human soul and all that the soul can experience. It believes it can partake of the divine by means of inner ecstasy and meditation. With this idea of the divinity of the human soul ’ a warm wave of tender sensuousness streams into the chill northern world. For not only the divine, but also the natural, is now drawn into the circle of the soul’s experience. Since mysticism makes man the vessel of God, since it lets God and the world be reflected in the same mirror of the human soul, it introduces a beatifying process, a deifying process, or, to choose a more exact phrase, that Tiumanizing process of the sur- rounding world and of the natural which is consistently developed into the idealistic pantheism that hails trees, animals— in short, all creation — as fraternal. The certainty of being able to see God in one’s self leads to a rejuvenation of the soul, and this re- juvenation reacts upon the whole existent world re- flected in the soul. It is a fine, subtle, subjective an- thropomorphism that here reveals itself. Since the world is here reflected not in the clear senses, but in the soul (in this supersensuous element), the process of sensualizing the world as effected b}" mysticism is not of such clear, sensuous character as the correspond- ing process in antiquity and in the Kenaissance. Far better could one speak in this case of a beatifying than of a sensualizing process. But given the close relation- ship between the feeling of the senses and that of the soul, it becomes evident that this new mystic feeling did, nevertheless, throw over a bridge to the refined sensu- The Pyschology op Mysticism. 141 ous feeling which the Renaissance made the European ideal. Hence, it is with mysticism that the sensuous ele- ment commences in the Gothic, although it is at first so mild and elusive that it appears only as supersensuous- ness. This sensuous supersensuousness of advanced Go- thic can best be denominated the lyrical element of Gothic. The rejuvenation of the soul becomes a rejuvenation of the senses, the joy in ego becomes the joy in nature, and a world of lyric sentimentality is aroused. It is the most sensitive, most delicate spectacle in the develop- ment of Gothic to observe how this new lyrical element of the Gothic adapts its peculiar character to the old frigid, unnatural form will and gradually envelops the rigid world of abstract forms with flower and bud dec- ' oration. First comes a coy playing around the old stiff forms, then a more affectionate caressing of them, and finally their complete embrace in a sweet, lyrically toned naturalism. The capitals become floral marvels [PI. XXVII, B]. There is no end of luxuriant crab and scroll work. And the tracery which was formerly ar- ranged so schematically and geometrically becomes an enchanted world of buds and blossoms. From within the hard, linear chaos a blossoming chaos now emerges. Thus, the ornament, too, follows the path from the ab- stract scholasticism of its early period to the sensuously supersensuous mysticism of late Gothic times. The formative arts in the narrower sense also take part in this lyric joy in nature, in this inundation of the world with the soul’s warm waves of sympathy. It is not to the rough, matter-of-fact world that the mystic surrenders himself in his fervor of love, but to a clari- fied world of the soul, a world that is wholly bathed in a tender, lyric sentiment. All rigidity melts, all hard- ness softens, every line is charged with the soul’s feel- ing. On the stern faces of the statues blooms a smile that comes from the very heart and seems the reflection of inner bliss [Frontispiece]. All becomes lyric, heart- felt, and soulful. Nature, which had been known to scho- lasticism only as hard actuality and had therefore been renounced, now becomes the Garden of God, springs 142 Fokm Problems of the Gtothic. into bloom, and changes from hard actuality to tender idyl. The hard, stiff linear treatment of the characteris- tic drawing is mollified. Angular crinkliness becomes rhythmic calligraphy. The spiritually expressive lines become soulfully expressive, the spiritual energy of the linear expression subsides into calligraphic inti- mady. What is lost in grandeur is gained in beauty. Individuality and Personality T T would require a special account of detailed and in- timate character to make clear this charming and varied counter-play and interplay of scholastic and ays- tic, of superpersonally abstract and personally natural, feeling in Gothic art. Here, where we are interested only in the main lines of development,, the suggestions of the preceding chapter must suiSfice. Yet in this chap- ter we nofust Ifocus attention upon the relation of mys- ticism to the Renaissance. We have seen that the growth of sensuous feeling which mysticism introduces is connected with the proc- ess of the individualization of northern mankind. In religion, as in art, we have noticed how the single ego becomes the channel of feeling and replaces the mass as channel of feeling. Now mediaeval feeling is identical with abstract, that is, mass feeling, and, consequently, it seems that mysticism prepares for the development of modern times. And of that there can be no doubt: it is the history of modern feeling, it is the history of modern art, that commences with mysticism. Accordingly, whoever scents Renaissance air in mysticism is not deceived, except that he must never forget that mysticism is a northern and the Renaissance a southern product. Because of the likeness, he must not overlook the difference. Mysticism leads to Prot- estantism, the southern Renaissance to European Clas- sicism. It is, in fact, the elementary difference between northern mankind and southern that brings two move- ments from the same starting point to very different goals. The same starting point of both movements is the passing of feeling and knowledge over from the mass to the single ego. With that we hit upon Burck- hardt’s graven words, the discovery of individuality in the Renaissance. A certain correction in this ex- pression will guide us along the right path and make us ( 143 ) 144 Foem Problems of the Gothic. umderstand the difference between the northern and southern development. The correction which Burckhardt’s saying requires is the substitution of personality for the word individual- ity. For personality is what was ‘ icovered in the southern Benaissance, which Burckhard^ had in mind. The concept of individuality, on the contrary, belongs to the northern world, it characterizes absolutely the in- most essence of northern mysticism. For the word individnality has negative coloring that makes it quite unsuitable to indicate the southern phenomenon. Its etymological genesis necessarily calls up the image of the mechanical partition of a mass into its smallest, indivisible components. This mecL aical process of partition, which abandons the individual separate parts to incoherence, gives no picture of the development which takes place in the southern Renais- sance. For in this case it is not a mass which is me- chanically cut up into countless incoherent parts, but it is a great social organism which gradually becomes conscious of its single parts and develops its compact solidity into a thousand fine, individual organs, into in- dividual organs each of which lives that life which is common to the whole organism, but in a smaller, less conspicuous manner. It is no mechanic process of par- tition, but an organic process of differentiation, in which the organic cohesion is guaranteed in spite of all differ- entiation. This wholly positive development the nega- tive coloring of the word individuality does not fit at all; but the word personality, as we commonly use it, certainly does. All the more the negative coloring of the word in- dividuality fits the northern process of individualization as this commences mth mysticism. In the north it is, in fact, more the process of decomposition, the process of crumbling a compact mass into countless arbitrary parts that fly asunder and lack any concentric, organic connection. Northern man feels, too, that this process of individualization is negative, that is, he soon be- comes conscious of his individual isolation, for through the negation of this ego to which he has attained he Individuality and Peibsonality. 145 seeks to deliver himself from individual isolation. The southern Renaissance movement, with its growing con- sciousness of personality, led to self-assertion, to self- affirmation, to self-glorification; the northern individual- izing process 1 ''s, on the other hand, to self -negation, to self-contempt. Individual character is here felt to be something negative, in fact, even something sinful. The individualism of mysticism preaches : Annihilate your individuality. Or, as it runs in the language of mysticism: Trample your nature under foot; who- ever persists in self cannot know God. That is pre- cisely the peculiar paradox of mysticism: derived from individualism, it forthwith directs its preaching against its source. While Renaissance man through realiza- tion of his ego and consciousness of liis personality becomes inwardly entirely free and independent and in clear self-assertion receives the world as his own, north- ern man after realization of his ego gives it up again instantly in ardent seeking after God. He has only become an individuality, not a personality. So mysticism, like scholasticism, remains transcendental, and the element of intoxication, the need of deliverance, plays the same role in both. The process of individual- ization does not let the dualistic distraction vanish but only makes it take other forms. Although we recognize mysticism to be a movement parallel in a certain sense to the southern Renaissance, we must not overlook its transcendental character, which makes it different from all Classical feeling of healthi- ness and worldliness and renders it a purely Gothic product. For by Gothic we understand that great phe- nomenon which is irreconcilably opposed to the Classic and is not bound to a single stylistic period but through- out the centuries manifests itself continually in ever new disguises and is not a mere temporary phenomenon but at bottom is a timeless racial phenomenon which is rooted in the innermost constitution of northern hu- manity and which, therefore, not even the levelling European Renaissance has been able to uproot. 146 Fokm Problems of the Gothic. To be sure, we are not to understand race in the narrow sense of race purity; rather, the word race must here comprehend all the peoples in whose racial mixture the Teutons have played an important role. And that holds good for the greater part of Europe. As far as it is penetrated with Teutonic elements it does, in a broader sense, show a racial cohesion which, in spite of the racial distinction in the usual sense, makes itself unmistakably (felt, and which is; as it were, crystallized and recorded for all time in such historical phenomena as the Gothic. For the Teutons, as we saw, are the conditio sine qnki non of the Gothic. They in- troduced among self-confident peoples the germs of doubt of sense and of distraction of soul, out of which the transcendental pathos of the Gothic then shot up so mightily. The real purpose of these sketchy observations was to lay bare the latent Gothic before the Gothic proper. It would require another study to ascertain the latent Gothic after the Gothic proper down to our own time. The Gothic character is still quite obvious in the Ba- roque in spite of the un-Gothic means of expression. To discover the later variants of the latent Gothic would require much finer and more delicate tools than we haAm had to provide for this investigation ; for, of course, this latent Gothic constantly acquires more dis- similar and refined processes of disguise; and who knows whether such a new investigation, penetrating to the innermost secret cells of style phenomena may not finally show even much northern Classicism of more modern times to be only disguised Gothic! v;929Far' 153093