176 



HABIT AND INTELLIGENCE. 



[CHAF. 



as organic 

 inorplio- 

 logy and 

 language. 



Morpho- 



Its pro- 

 gressive 

 changes. 



English 

 architec- 

 ture. 



treatment of the history of art is possible ; and it is found 

 to involve the same principles that obtain alike in organic 

 morphology and in the science of language. In art, we 

 have to do with comparative morphology, and with de- 

 velopment and progressive gradual change. It is no 

 metaphor to speak of morphology in art; the word is 

 logy of art. applicable with the most perfect literalness to those arts 

 of which the object is form : architecture is perhaps the 

 best instance. In any historical account of a style of 

 architecture, or in any comparative account of styles 

 which are not too unlike for comparison, especially if they 

 have a common origin, it would be almost impossible to 

 avoid the use of language which sounds as if it were bor- 

 rowed from organic morphology. Thus, in describing the 

 progressive changes of the architecture of England, we 

 say that from the time of the introduction of the pointed 

 arch, by which the Gothic style was constituted as a dis- 

 tinct style, arches gradually became flatter, mouldings less 

 bold, and ornaments more elaborate. Or in tracing the 

 descent with modification (and in the word descent is 

 implied an analogy with living beings), — in tracing the 

 process of descent, I say, by which the Eoman architec- 

 Gothic,aud i^ufg was modified into the Gothic on the one side, and 

 into the Oriental or Saracenic on the other, we find that 

 the arch, which was semicircular in the Eoman style, 

 became pointed in the Gothic, and in the Oriental acquired 

 the " horse-shoe " form, or, in other words, became a some- 

 what greater arc than a semicircle. We use exactly the 

 same language when we describe how the leg of the 

 quadruped is so modified as to be changed into the wing 

 of the bat or into the paddle of the whale ; and all these 

 changes, those of organic morphology and the morphology 

 of art alike, as well as the changes of language, come 

 under the one law of the gradual variability of habit. 

 This, I think, is self-evident, if once the origin of species 

 by descent with modification is. admitted. 



There is no doubt this difference, that changes in organic 

 morphology are due to the action of totally unconscious 

 forces, and changes in language are due to mental forces 



Roman, 



architec 

 ture. 



