320 PROCEEDINGS OP THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



essential difference, a difference that criticism is bound to observe. 

 Hence, in the discussion of the identity or non-identity of two such 

 forms, the argument, if following this general direction, must turn upon 

 the answer to the question respecting each, " Did the artist, con- 

 sciously or unconsciously, work with the column or the pier type in 

 mind?" 



§ 4. Application of the Tlieory to the " Proto- Doric" Question. 



Should we continue the study of the logical evolution of the column 

 and pier, we should find the subject steadily becoming more clear, and 

 the conclusions in regard to it more abundantly substantiated by 

 familiar examples. But we have gone far enough for our purpose : 

 let us now turn to the application of the theory to the actual forms 

 before us. I have approached the criticism of the forms themselves 

 by a circuitous route, because I am convinced that only thus can we 

 see them aright. The famous questiou of the existence of Doric types 

 in Egypt must be regarded from the side of theoretic development 

 rather than from that of natural history ; we must seek to determine the 

 artistic motives, whether consciously operative or not, which directed 

 architects in Egypt, and afterwards in Greece, in the choice and elab- 

 oration of the forms in question, rather than merely to compare their 

 shapes and proportions as so many similar or dissimilar phenom- 

 ena. Not that this scientific comparison is valueless, but that its 

 conclusions are not so decisive as those which result from a thought- 

 ful consideration of the early development of architectural ideas. 

 Hence, though I shall refer to the external differences between the 

 Egyptian and the Greek forms, I shall do so principally because they 

 add something to the probability of the internal ones. 



My purpose, briefly stated, is to show how I conceive that the true 

 Doric and the so-called " proto-Doric " forms stand at the ends of two 

 long lines of development that set out from totally diverse sources. 

 No one, I think, will venture to argue that the forms under considera- 

 tion are primitive or simple; they are rather elevated points in the 

 course of artistic progress, which were reached, not by a sudden leap, 

 but by gradual approach. If, then, though the points themselves seem 

 to lie never so near together, the lines of development in which they 

 lie can be traced backward towards their starting-points, and can be 

 shown to be so strongly divergent when thus pursued that their origins 

 cannot be identical, the irreconcilable theoretic separation of the points 

 is established and their historic connection rendered improbable. 



