CHAPTER III 



Taste^ 

 Individual 

 and 

 Community 



TASTE, IDEALS, STYLE, AND CHARACTER IN LANDSCAPE 



DESIGN 



Taste, individual and community — Development of taste — " Schools " and tradi- 

 tion — Teaching and taste — Criticism — Self-criticism in design — Choice of 

 IDEALS — Perfection — Imagination and genius — Style ; Individual style — 

 Historic styles — Humanized and naturalistic styles — Interpretation of land- 

 scape CHARACTER. 



According to the natural constitution of a person's mind, and accord- 

 ing to the store of memories which have come to him through experi- 

 ence, he likes certain things and dislikes certain other things. He has 

 inevitably acquired a personal and individual taste. In most people 

 this is not consciously acquired, nor consciously applied, and is to be 

 discovered only by the man's emotional reaction in each individual 

 case. A man may however go consciously to work to define and cul- 

 tivate his individual taste. Possibly he may analyze his own experi- 

 ences and determine what it is in each that makes it pleasing or dis- 

 pleasing, so that in time he has found certain laws by which his own 

 likes or dislikes, at any rate, seem to be governed. His taste, so cul- 

 tivated, might be quite at variance with the taste of his fellows. 

 Actually, however, as man is a very imitative animal, each person is 

 greatly influenced in his likes and dislikes by what he discovers to be 

 the likes and dislikes of his fellows. This is a very deep-seated instinct, 

 and may well trace its origin to the time when similar thinking by the 

 whole tribe was an important means of tribal unity and safety. It 

 comes about, therefore, that if a number of people live together under 

 the same circumstances, they will have the same taste, to a considerable 

 extent, through similarity of experience and through imitation, and so, 

 even without any conscious fostering of taste, there may be com- 



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