of the term, but in the special sense above defined, is the Holy
Communion of the Christian Church. Its origin is a matter of common
knowledge. On the evening of the night in which He was betrayed,
Jesus and His disciples were gathered together for the feast of the
Passover. Aware of His impending betrayal, and desirous of impressing
powerfully upon His chosen followers the nature and purpose of His
sacrifice, Jesus ordained a sacrament out of the simple materials of
the repast. He took bread and broke it, and gave to each a piece as
the symbol of His broken body; and to each He passed a cup of wine,
as a symbol of His poured-out blood. In this act, as in the washing of
the disciples' feet on the same occasion, He made His ministrations to
the needs of men's bodies an allegory of His greater ministration to
the needs of their souls.
The sacrament of the Lord's Supper is of such beauty and power that it
has persisted even to the present day. It lacks, however, the element
of universality--at least by other than Christians its universality
would be denied. Let us seek, therefore some all-embracing symbol to
illustrate the sacramental view of life.
Perhaps marriage is such a symbol. The public avowal of love between
a man and woman, their mutual assumption of the attendant privileges,
duties and responsibilities are matters so pregnant with consequences
to them and to the race that by all right-thinking people marriage is
regarded as a high and holy thing; its sacramental character is felt
and acknowledged even by those who would be puzzled to tell the reason
why.
The reason is involved in the answer to the question, "Of what is
marriage a symbol?" The most obvious answer, and doubtless the best
one, is found in the well known and much abused doctrine, common to
every religion, of the spiritual marriage between God and the soul.
What Christians call _the Mystic Way,_ and Buddhists _the Path_
comprises those changes in consciousness through which every soul
passes on its way to perfection. When the personal life is conceived
of as an allegory of this inner, intense, super-mundane life, it
assumes a sacramental character. With strange unanimity, followers
of the Mystic Way have given the name of marriage to that memorable
experience in "the flight of the Alone to the Alone," when the soul,
after trials and purgations, enters into indissoluble union with the
spirit, that divine, creative principle whereby it is made fruitful
for this world. Marriage, then, however dear and close the union, is
the symbol of a union dearer and closer, for it is the fair prophecy
that on some higher arc of the evolutionary spiral, the soul will meet
its immortal lover and be initiated into divine mysteries.
As an example of the power of symbols to induce those changes of
consciousness whereby the soul is prepared for this union, it is
recorded that an eminent scientist was moved to alter his entire mode
of life on reflecting, while in his bath one morning, that though each
day he was at such pains to make clean his body, he made no similar
purgation of his mind and heart. The idea appealed to him so
profoundly that he began to practise the higher cleanliness from that
day forth.
If it be true, as has been said, that ordinary life in the world is a
training school for a life more real and more sublime, then everything
pertaining to life in the world must possess a sacramental character,
and possess it inherently, and not merely by imputation. Let us
discover, then, if we can, some of the larger meanings latent in
little things.
When at the end of a cloudy day the sun bursts forth in splendor and
sets red in the west, it is a sign to the weather-wise that the next
day will be fair. To the devotee of the sacramental life it holds a
richer promise. To him the sun is a symbol of the love of God; the
clouds, those worldly preoccupations of his own which hide its face
from him. This purely physical phenomenon, therefore, which brings
to most men a scarcely noticed augmentation of heat and light, and
an indication of fair weather on the morrow, induces in the mystic an
ineffable sense of divine immanence and beneficence, and an assurance
of their continuance beyond the dark night of the death of the body.
When the sacramentalist goes swimming in the sea he enjoys to the full
the attendant physical exhilaration, but a greater joy flows from
the thought that he is back with his great Sea-Mother--that feminine
principle of which the sea is the perfect symbol, since water brings
all things to birth and nurtures them. When at the end of a day
he lays aside his clothes--that two-dimensional sheath of the
three-dimensional body--it is in full assurance that his body in turn
will be abandoned by the inwardly retreating consciousness, and that
he will range wherever he wills during the hours of sleep, clothed in
his subtle four-dimensional body, related to the physical body as that
is related to the clothes it wears.
To every sincere seeker nature reveals her secrets, but since men
differ in their curiosities she reveals different things to different
men. All are rewarded for their devotion in accordance with their
interests and desires, but woman-like, nature reveals herself most
fully to him who worships not the fair form of her, but her soul. This
favored lover is the mystic; for ever seeking instruction in things
spiritual, he perceives in nature an allegory of the soul, and
interprets her symbols in terms of the sacramental life.
The brook, pursuing its tortuous and stony pathway in untiring effort
to reach its gravitational centre, is a symbol of the Pilgrim's
progress, impelled by love to seek God within his heart. The modest
daisy by the roadside, and the wanton sunflower in the garden alike
seek to image the sun, the god of their worship, a core of seeds and
fringe of petals representing their best effort to mimic the flaming
disc and far-flung corona of the sun. Man seeks less ardently, and so
more ineffectively in his will and imagination to image God. In the
reverent study of insect and animal life we gain some hint of what we
have been and what we may become--something corresponding to the grub,
a burrowing thing; to the caterpillar, a crawling thing; and finally
to the butterfly, a radiant winged creature.
After this fashion then does he who has embraced the sacramental life
come to perceive in the "sensuous manifold" of nature, that one divine
Reality which ever seeks to instruct him in supermundane wisdom, and
to woo him to superhuman blessedness and peace. In time, this reading
of earth in terms of heaven, becomes a settled habit. Then, in
Emerson's phrase, he has hitched his wagon to a star, and changed his
grocer's cart into a chariot of the sun.
The reader may perhaps fail to perceive the bearing of this long
discussion of symbols and sacraments upon the subject of art and
architecture, but in the mind of the author the correlation is
plain. There can be no great art without religion: religion begins in
consciousness as a mystic experience, it flows thence into symbols
and sacraments, and these in turn are precipitated by the artist into
ponderable forms of beauty. Unless the artist himself participates in
this mystic experience, life's deeper meanings will escape him, and
the work of his hands will have no special significance. Until it can
be said of every artist
"Himself from God he could not free,"
there will be no art worthy of the name.
SELF-EDUCATION[1]
I take great pleasure in availing myself of this opportunity to speak
to you on certain aspects of the art which we practise. I cannot
forget, and I hope that you sufficiently remember, that the
architectural future of this country lies in the hands of just such
men as you. Let me dwell then for a moment on your unique opportunity.
Perhaps some of you have taken up architecture as you might have gone
into trade, or manufacturing, or any of the useful professions; in
that case you have probably already learned discrimination, and now
realize that in the cutting of the cake of human occupations you
have drawn the piece which contains the ring of gold. The cake is
the business and utilitarian side of life, the ring of gold is the
æsthetic, the creative side: treasure it, for it is a precious and
enduring thing. Think what your work is: to reassemble materials in
such fashion that they become instinct with a beauty and eloquent with
a meaning which may carry inspiration and delight to generations still
unborn. Immortality haunts your threshold, even though your hand may
not be strong enough to open to the heavenly visitor.
Though the profession of architecture is a noble one in any country
and in any age, it is particularly rich in inspiration and in
opportunity here and now, for who can doubt that we are about to enter
upon a great building period? We have what Mr. Sullivan calls "the
need and the power to build," the spirit of great art alone is
lacking, and that is already stirring in the secret hearts of men, and
will sooner or later find expression in objective and ponderable
forms of new beauty. These it is your privilege to create. May the
opportunity find you ready! There is a saying, "To be young, to be in
love, to be in Italy!" I would paraphrase it thus: To be young, to be
in architecture, to be in America.
It is my purpose tonight to outline a scheme of self-education, which
if consistently followed out I am sure will help you, though I am
aware that to a certain order of mind it will seem highly mystical and
impractical. If it commends itself to your favor I shall be glad.
Many of you will have had the advantage of a thorough technical
training in your chosen profession: be grateful for it. Others, like
Topsy, "just growed"--or have just failed to grow. For the solace of
all such, without wishing to be understood to disparage architectural
schooling, I would say that there is a kind of education which is
worse than none, for by filling his mind with ready-made ideas it
prevents a man from ever learning to think for himself; and there is
another kind which teaches him to think, indeed, but according to some
arbitrary method, so that his mind becomes a canal instead of a river,
flowing in a predetermined and artificial channel, and unreplenished
by the hidden springs of the spirit. The best education can do no more
than to bring into manifestation that which is inherent; it does this
by means of some stimulus from without--from books and masters--but
the stimulus may equally come from within: each can develop his own
mind, and in the following manner.
The alternation between a state of activity and a state of passivity,
which is a law of our physical being, as it is a law of all nature,
is characteristic of the action of the mind as well: observation and
meditation are the two poles of thought. The tendency of modern life
and of our active American temperament is towards a too exclusive
functioning of the mind in its outgoing state, and this results in
a great cleverness and a great shallowness. It is only in moments of
quiet meditation that the great synthetic, fundamental truths reveal
themselves. Observe ceaselessly, weigh, judge, criticize--this order
of intellectual activity is important and valuable--but the mind must
be steadied and strengthened by another and a different process. The
power of attention, the ability to concentrate, is the measure of
mental efficiency; and this power may be developed by a training
exactly analogous to that by which a muscle is developed, for mind
and muscle are alike the instruments of the Silent Thinker who sits
behind. The mind an instrument of something higher than the mind: here
is a truth so fertile that in the language of Oriental imagery, "If
you were to tell this to a dry stick, branches would grow, and leaves
sprout from it."
There is nothing original in the method of mental development here
indicated; it has been known and practised for centuries in the East,
where life is less strenuous than it is with us. The method consists
in silent meditation every day at stated periods, during which the
attempt is made to hold the mind to the contemplation of a single
image or idea, bringing the attention back whenever it wanders,
killing each irrelevant thought as it arises, as one might kill a
rat coming out of a hole. This turning of the mind back on itself is
difficult, but I know of nothing that "pays" so well, and I have never
found any one who conscientiously practised it who did not confirm
this view. The point is, that if a man acquires the ability to
concentrate on one thing, he can concentrate on anything; he increases
his competence on the mental plane in the same manner that pulling
chest-weights increases his competence on the physical. The practice
of meditation has moreover an ulterior as well as an immediate
advantage, and that is the reason it is practised by the Yogis of
India. They believe that by stilling the mind, which is like a lake
reflecting the sky, the Higher Self communicates a knowledge of Itself
to the lower consciousness. Without the working of this Oversoul in
and through us we can never hope to produce an architecture which
shall rank with the great architectures of the past, for in Egypt, in
Greece, in mediaeval France, as in India, China, and Japan, mysticism
made for itself a language more eloquent than any in which the purely
rational consciousness of man has ever spoken.
We are apt to overestimate the importance of books and book learning.
Think how small a part books have played in the development of
architecture; indeed, Palladio and Vignola, with their hard and fast
formulæ have done the art more harm than good. It is a fallacy that
reading strengthens the mind--it enervates it; reading sometimes
stimulates the mind to original thinking, and _this_ develops it,
but reading itself is a passive exercise, because the thought of the
reader is for the time being in abeyance in order that the thought
of the writer may enter. Much reading impairs the power to think
originally and consecutively. Few of the great creators of the world
have had use for books, and if you aspire to be in their class you
will avoid the "spawn of the press." The best plan is to read only
great books, and having read for five minutes, think about what you
have read for ten.
These exercises, faithfully followed out, will make your mind a fit
vehicle for the expression of your idea, but the advice I have
given is as pertinent to any one who uses his mind as it is to the
architect. To what, specifically, should the architectural student
devote his attention in order to improve the quality of his work?
My own answer would be that he should devote himself to the study of
music, of the human figure, and to the study of Nature--"first, last,
midst, and without end."
The correlation between music and architecture is no new thought; it
is implied in the famous saying that architecture is frozen music.
Vitruvius considered a knowledge of music to be a qualification of the
architect of his day, and if it was desirable then it is no less so
now. There is both a metaphysical reason and a practical one why
this is so. Walter Pater, in a famous phrase, declared that all art
constantly aspires to the condition of music, by which he meant to
imply that there is a certain rhythm and harmony at the root of every
art, of which music is the perfect and pure expression; that in
music the means and the end are one and the same. This coincides with
Schopenhauer's theory about music, that it is the most perfect
and unconditioned sensuous presentment known to us of that undying
_will-to-live_ which constitutes life and the world. Metaphysics
aside, the architect ought to hear as much good music as he can, and
learn the rudiments of harmony, at least to the extent of knowing the
simple numerical ratios which govern the principal consonant intervals
within the octave, so that, translating these ratios into intervals of
space expressed in terms of length and breadth, height, and width, his
work will "aspire to the condition of music."
There is a metaphysical reason, too, as well as a practical one, why
an architect should know the human figure. Carlyle says, "There is but
one temple in the world, and that is the body of man." If the body
is, as he declares, a temple, it is no less true that a temple, or any
work of architectural art is in the nature of an ampler body which
man has created for his uses, and which he inhabits, just as the
individual consciousness builds and inhabits its fleshly stronghold.
This may seem a highly mystical idea, but the correlation between
the house and its inhabitant, and the body and its consciousness is
everywhere close, and is susceptible of infinite elaboration.
Architectural beauty, like human beauty, depends upon a proper
subordination of parts to the whole, a harmonious interrelation
between these parts, the expressiveness of each of its functions, and
when these are many and diverse, their reconcilement one with another.
This being so, a study of the human figure with a view to analyzing
the sources of its beauty cannot fail to be profitable to the
architectural designer. Pursued intelligently, such study will
stimulate the mind to a perception of those simple yet subtle laws
according to which nature everywhere works, and it will educate
the eye in the finest known school of proportion, training it to
distinguish minute differences, in the same way that the hearing of
good music cultivates the ear.
It is neither necessary nor desirable to make elaborate and carefully
shaded drawings from a posed model; an equal number of hours spent in
copying and analyzing the plates of a good art anatomy, supplemented
with a certain amount of life drawing, done merely with a view to
catch the pose, will be found to be a more profitable exercise, for it
will make you familiar with the principal and subsidiary proportions
of the bodily temple, and give you sufficient data to enable you to
indicate a figure in any position with fair accuracy.
I recommend the study of Nature because I believe that such study
will assist you to recover that direct and instant perception of
beauty, our natural birthright, of which over-sophistication has
so bereft us that we no longer know it to be ours by right of
inheritance--inheritance from that cosmic matter endowed with
motion out of which we are fashioned, proceeding ever rationally and
rhythmically to its appointed ends. We are all of us participators in
a world of concrete music, geometry and number--a world, that is, so
mathematically constituted and co-ordinated that our pigmy bodies,
equally with the farthest star, throb to the music of the spheres. The
blood flows rhythmically, the heart its metronome; the moving limbs
weave patterns; the voice stirs into radiating sound-waves that pool
of silence which we call the air.
"Thou canst not wave thy staff in air,
Or dip thy paddle in the lake,
But it carves the bow of beauty there,
And ripples in rhyme the oar forsake."
The whole of animate creation labours under the beautiful necessity of
being beautiful. Everywhere it exhibits a perfect utility subservient
to harmonious laws. Nature is the workshop in which are built
_beautiful organisms_. This is exactly the aim of the architect--to
fashion beautiful organisms; what better school, therefore, could he
have in which to learn his trade?
To study Nature it is not necessary to go out into the fields and
botanize, nor to attempt to make water colours of picturesque scenery.
These things are very well, but not so profitable to your particular
purpose as observation directed toward the discovery of the laws which
underlie and determine form and structure, such as the tracing of the
spiral line, not alone where it is obvious, as in the snail's shell
and in the ram's horn, but where it appears obscurely, as in the
disposition of leaves or twigs upon a parent stem. Such laws of nature
are equally laws of art, for art _is_ nature carried to a higher power
by reason of its passage through a human consciousness. Thought and
emotion tend to crystallize into forms of beauty as inevitably, and
according to the same laws, as does the frost on the window pane. Art,
in one of its aspects, is the weaving of a pattern, the communication
of an order and a method to lines, forms, colors, sounds. All very
poetical, and possibly true, you may be saying to yourselves, but
what has it to do with architecture, which nowadays, at least, is
pre-eminently a practical and utilitarian art whose highest mission
is to fulfil definite conditions in an economical and admirable way;
whose supreme excellence is fitness, appropriateness, the perfect
adaptation of means to ends, and the apt expression of both means
and ends? Yes, architecture is all of this, but this is not all of
architecture; else the most efficient engineer would be the most
admirable architect, which does not happen to be the case. Along with
the expression of the concrete and individual must go the expression
of the abstract and universal; the two can be combined in a single
building in the same way that in every human countenance are
combined a racial or temperamental _type_, which is universal, and a
_character_, which is individual. The expression of any sort of cosmic
truth, of universal harmony and rhythm, is the quality which our
architecture most conspicuously lacks. Failing to find the cosmic
truth within ourselves, failing to vibrate to the universal harmony
and rhythm, our architecture is--well, what it is, for only that which
is native to our living spirit can we show forth in the work of our
hands.
Your work will be, in the last analysis, what you yourselves are. Let
no sophistry blind you to the truth of that. There are rhythms in the
world of space which we find only in the architecture of the past, and
enamoured of their beauty we repeat them over and over (off the key
for the most part), on the principle that all the songs have been
sung; or we just make a noise, on the principle that noise is all
there is to architecture anyway. It is not so. Those systems of
spatial rhythms which we call Egyptian, Classic, Gothic, Renaissance
architecture and the rest, are records all of the living human spirit
energizing in the stubborn matter of the physical plane with joy, with
conviction, with mastery. When that undying spirit awakes again in
you, stirred into consciousness by meditation, which is its prayer;
by music, which is its praise; by the contemplation of that fair
form which is its temple; and by communion with nature, which is its
looking-glass; you will experience again that ancient joy, hold again
that firm conviction, and exercise again that mastery to transfuse the
granite and iron heart of the hills into patterns unlike any that the
hand of man has made before.
[Footnote 1: An address delivered before the Boston Architectural Club
in April, 1909.]