PROBLEMS OF MODERN ARCHITECTURE 639 



our bearings and judge of our future course. So widely do the de- 

 velopments of the nineteenth century in architecture seem to differ 

 from anything we observe in its previous history that we might 

 almost imagine that the laws which have controlled the progress 

 of the arts in earlier ages had ceased to operate. In the matter of 

 style, for instance, the apparent confusion of the present day stands 

 in striking contrast with the unity of Greek or of Gothic art. But 

 this contrast is not due to the failure of the laws which have governed 

 the evolution of styles in the past, but to new conditions producing new 

 results under the same laws. These laws are not enactments, but 

 simply the observed Avays of working of the human mind in matters 

 of art: the outward expression in practice of principles which are 

 fundamental and immutable. If the stock formulae of historic crit- 

 icism fail to fit our modern art, the fault lies in the form of their 

 statement, not in the laws they express; and the defect of statement 

 comes from their being framed upon the experience of ages in which 

 the conditions were widely different from those of to-day. We must 

 devise new forms for their expression, in terms of present-day 

 experience. If. for instance, we cease to define architectural styles 

 in terms of profiles and features and details of design, and apply 

 as criteria of style the broader considerations of spirit, feeling, 

 structure, mass, and composition, we may discover underlying the 

 apparent confusion of modern styles certain unities of spirit and 

 method upon which we can build new definitions of modern styles. 

 If the critic of future days shall find, as I believe he will find, no 

 great difficulty in recognizing the architecture of our time by these 

 controlling characteristics, then he will with perfect justice predicate 

 the style of this period as defined by these characteristics. The 

 confusion of details borrowed from past ages will trouble him no more 

 than we are troubled by the appearance of Doric and Ionic columns 

 together in the Propykea at Athens, or by finding in Greek archi- 

 tecture elements of both Egyptian and Asiatic origin. And when he 

 notes the prevalent use, as a decorative dress for steel-frame build- 

 ings, of forms originally belonging to lit hie architecture, he will see 

 therein the working of the same law of stylo-evolution by which 

 the Greek perpetuated in stone many details originating in wooden 

 construction, and by which the Roman incorporated into his archi- 

 tecture of vaults and arches, of brick and concrete, the columnar 

 details which he had learned from the Greeks. 



Let us now briefly review the origin of the changed conditions 

 which so sharply mark off the nineteenth century from all previous 

 periods in the history of art. 



The nineteenth century was ushered in by profound political and 

 social disturbances following the great democratic revolutions in 

 America and France, and lasting through the whole first half of the 



