334 
[June, 
The Conception of Ideas and the 
in Nature generally ? Is it merely a matter of survival ? 
He who threw his weapon straightest, he who made for the 
shortest distance between two points, and so forth ? Animals, 
though, seem to have this consciousness, though perhaps an 
inseCt does not. But can any historical improvement in 
a race be traced ? I think so. I am most certainly inclined 
to the belief that old sculptures, paintings, &c., stiff crude, 
or whatever else they may be, represent the exaCt state of 
the mind of the people amongst whom it was produced, 
otherwise it would have been detedted and corredted — must 
have been. On these grounds I should say the old Egyptian 
was ‘‘ his beard over again ; ” and the stiffness of the 
Assyrian designs actually existed in their intercourse and 
modes of thought : their literature would be the same. This 
is why the Greeks were alike beautiful (according to our 
conceptions) in their face, their art, and their writings. Is it 
not known that the old oriental music was wildly discordant 
and meagre ? But with the Aryan Greek did not her earliest 
poet know the power of the Syren’s music ? At last the 
mind had broken free : unfettered it scudded before the wind 
of fancy and taste whither so ever it would : thought flowed 
easy, and so consequently the fold of the garment on the 
statue and the pen of the poet in his verse. Can we trace 
the pure descendants of these Assyrians and Egyptians ? 
What is their artistic taste to day ? Can a Hindu whose 
fathers carved the uncouth monsters scattered over the land 
of India now paint like a European or attain any excellency 
in sculpture according to European standards of judgment — 
beyond mere imitation ? I have not the information : but in 
case it is so, which I am inclined to doubt, the question of a 
development in the Hindu mind is debateable. It is possible 
from religious prejudices or erroneous fashions to adhere to 
old conceptions ot beauty long after common sense scorns it. 
The differences strike me as mental incongruities rather than 
faulty or uneducated manipulation. 
Then if we turn more particularly to architecture since 
Christ s time for a visible exhibition of the mind of nations 
we are impressed with various thoughts. To me they all 
tell their story. It is said that the Gothic pillars may be 
continued any length without destroying the beauty of the 
effect. Is this not a visible exhibition of the latent ideas 
floating in the mind of the principles of Christianity “ looking 
heavenwards ? ” 
The Gothic architect stands beneath and between pillars 
that tower away heavenwards ; he is ess mtially at the bottom , 
just in the same way the eye of the Norman architect is in 
