XL.l HABIT AND VARIATION IN HISTORY. :I77 



acting witli very little consciousness ; but changes in styles 

 of art are made with Ml consciousness on the part of the 

 artist. This difference, however, is not fundamental, if it 

 is true, as I have elsewhere argued,^ that organizing intel- 

 ligence and mental intelligence are essentially the same. 

 The love of slight nr velty for its own sake, though an Love of 

 unintelligent principle, is probably the moving or impelling !>o^elty 

 power, though not the controlling one, in the XJ^gress of moving 

 art, in the direction both of improvement and deterioration ; t]°e\?ro-^ 

 without this, I mean, art would be either quite stationarv, S'ess of 

 or subject to very few and slight changes ; and this love 

 of slight novelty, as I have already remarked, is probably 

 very closely connected with the law of the gradual varia- 

 bility of habit.- On the other hand, the continuity which 

 is so remarkable in the history of art, — without which, 

 indeed, art could not be said to have a history at all, — this 

 continuity, I say, is due to the constancy of habit, and to Habit is 



the mental law that great or sudden changes are disagree- f reason 



o o & 01 con- 



able. It may be said that in point of fact the history of tinuity in 



art is less continuous than I have stated it to be. I do of lit'' "''^ 

 not deny that the history of art presents some very re- 

 markable instances of rapid, if not quite abrupt change. Rapid 

 Some of these, however, are cases merely of the introduc- phanges 

 tion of a foreign style which has superseded the native 

 one, as when the pointed Gothic architecture was intro- 

 duced from France into Western Germany, and rapidly and 

 completely superseded the old round-arched style. Others 

 are due to the introduction of new materials or of new 

 necessities : I shall have to mention a very remarkable 

 instance of this kind further on. But the total change in Suli.stitu- 

 English architecture from the roiind-arched Norman of w?"/" , 

 Glastonburv to the Early Pointed of Salisbury is not to be of Early 

 thus accounted for. It appears to be a case of almost total Nonnan. ' 

 transformation, effected without any extraneous cause, and 

 in a very short time.^ But this does not violate — on the 



See the chapter on Intelligence (Chap. XXVIL). 

 ^ 2 See the chapter on the Laws of Variation (Chap. XVI.). 



3 I believe this change nearly coincides in date witli the transformation 

 of the Norman kingdom of England into an English one. 

 VOL. II. X 



