PATHOLOGICAL STATES IN EVOLUTION. 



241 



as the evolution of a cathedral, in the hope that it may throw a 

 light on other than architectural puzzles : merely observing, on 

 the way, that no general principle yet discovered is confined in 

 its application to one branch of knowledge. Having once found 

 it, our task is to employ it as a weapon of further analysis. 



It is more or less a commonplace that function creates 

 structure, however Lamarckian that may sound; and in the case 

 of architecture of a religious order the function which constructs 

 is public worship. In line climates the necessary structure is 

 often a roofless temple. In tropical climates a tlat roof may be 

 needed as a protection against the sun. In temperate climates a 

 walled enclosure is insufficient and a flat roofed structure cannot 

 keep out rain effectually or bear heavy snow. Thus arose the 

 pointed or sloping roof. But it has been said that "Gothic 

 architecture is not a style. It is a fight." The arch is a mighty 

 warrior. It gives and receives thrusts. The sloping roof partakes 

 of the same nature. Need created it and the nature of materials 

 and the positional energy we call gravity caused thrusts which 

 endangered the simple walls of the building, walls at first meant 

 to endure nothing but flat roofs probably covered with brush or 

 the like material. To build stronger walls might have occurred 

 to the primitive architect, but as the danger was immediate, he 

 probably at once shored those in existence, and then built others 

 at a right angle to act as buttresses. In the meantime the 

 worshippers increased in numbers, and it is indulging in no 

 flight of fancy to suppose the later builder saw that if the new 

 externa] walls were roofed over and doorways cut into the main 

 building, there would be an immediate increase of space by the 

 creation of chapels. Such a series of embryonic additional walled 

 spaces, with further doorways in them leading to each other, 

 obviously gave him the aisles. The flying buttresses which are 

 such a feature in great Gothic architecture had, I can only 

 suppose, a like origin. They were originally buttress walls carried 

 up to the roof. At some period a genius, already acquainted 

 with arcuated structure, saw that if the inside of these walls was 

 cut away they would still take a heavy thrust and lighten the 

 rest of the building. If, however, on being converted into such 

 slender stone shores they showed signs of yielding, what could be 

 easier than to pile some of the material taken away on the base 

 of the flying arch and thus create the beginning of the pinnacle ? 

 Though an architect might develop such a rough statement, he 

 would be the first to admit that it represents in few words much 

 of the evolution of a church ; that is, he would own the structure 

 sprang from need, and that each new need caused a constructional 

 failure which, when strengthened and corrected, was the cause of 

 further structure. He would further tell us that all good orna- 

 ment is organic ; that it springs naturally from the work already 

 done, being in its origin just the^ little more needed to give a 

 margin of safety, though on it later are exercised the aesthetic 

 faculties of man, which are again a response to the need of full 



