Aims and Methods 
reach it. We have learned certain archi- 
tectural truths, and we respect them theo- 
retically even though we may often err in 
their application. We do not expect to 
build a good house without an architect to 
help us; we do not expect him to begin 
without a clear idea of the kind of house 
we want— of the special site it must occupy, 
the special needs it must fulfil, the special 
tastes it must meet. We are not content if 
he designs it by throwing together a number 
of pretty features regardless of harmony in 
the result. Nor do we buy our furniture 
bit by bit as passing whims dictate, or pile 
it casually about in our rooms. At least 
there are not so many of us who do these 
things as there were twenty years ago, and 
we are all aware that they ought not to be 
done. 
Yet they are just the things which almost 
everyone does outside his house. If he has 
‘ 4 no taste for Nature ’ ’ himself, he puts his 
grounds into the hands of a gardener, with- 
out inquiring whether he has any qualifica- 
tions beyond a knowledge of how to make 
plants grow. And if he has such a taste 
29 
