v. i make our meaning plainer by comparing this cycle to an imaginary 



in the history of architecture. The buildings of primitive times would 



substantial, plain. ;m<l suitable to the I i mi t «■•! wants of the pi 



then, as wealth increased, the architects would respond with showy structures, 



haying more ornamentation, and more complicated interiors. We will Buppose 



that they bad begun t«> place most of their ornamentation in and upon the central 



of the modern buildings, and, <>ut of deference t<> inherited canons ol 

 had always, even m the most florid acme of their progress, adhered to tin- law, 

 indations primitive in st \ K- and uppermost portions always unadorned. 

 A- time pi structures would assume vasl proportions, and would In- 



built in ever increasing numbers, until at last the nation, having outgrown it* 

 ^th, would begin to decline. The vast buildings would have t<> be aban- 

 doned, and -mailer habitations would arise, in answer to the requirements of a 

 population. The architects, faithful t<> their inherited canons, bul I 

 mplicity, would gradually follow the decline, and record it in the structures 

 of the decadence. The) would effect this, we will suppose, by reducing the 



ornamentation from above downwards, thus gradually doing away with the cen- 

 tral hand of ornamentation, and also by actually lessening the height and other- 

 etiie_ r the hulk uf the buildings. Primitive simplicity would thus be 

 ed, l>ut Btrong trace- would Btill be left in the Btyle and construction of the 

 buildings of their having been adapted, by a process of reduction, from a pre- 

 viously existing period <>t' greater aize and complexity in structure. It would 

 read in the Btyle of the decadence, thai all the buildings had 

 from primitive forms through the medium of a progressive period, during 

 which the central Btories had undergone the greatest modifii I'his would 



e in main sun i\ ing peculiarities of the mode- of la} ing the coui 



-tone, the cutting and more eleganl Bhaping of the in t • i It would, how- 



, tally plain that the architecture of the upper Btories had always been 



>t.-. Miid also that their degenerate forms had replaced the 



ornamentation and forms "i tin- centra] part- of buildings during the 



■ 



Id quite accurately represent the reversion of the form* we have 



'In- purely retrogn tied. We 



can understand their structural degeneration and their positions a- tin' latest 



upon the same grounds, Bince they would i 

 aarily the termini of the series. Th< characters could not 



• n inheritable, an) more than the architecture of the 

 buildings alluded to above, but a tendenc) t<> degeneration caused by tin- un- 

 irroundings would have to lie assumed. Each generation in - 

 upon b) tin- tendency, like ti. ive buildings of tie- di 



would when senili ould replace tin' pn 



•■!' the iifllllt period. The genitolOgOUfl eli. i' 

 dlH' to the |u-- uf the p| 



of the adult; and tin- i- equally true when tie 



upared with those of the simple, generalized radical om which 



