The Human Factors In Architecture

FACING the vast amount of literature on architectural history, it would be almost an impertinence to offer the public another book were it not that so little has been written that may be readily understood and enjoyed by those without technical training.

I have undertaken to discuss this subtle and fascinating expression of human development from the viewpoint of familiar, everyday experience here in our American homes. With the construction and design of the buildings on our own streets in city, town, or village, as examples, we will trace the growth of form and detail back through the ages, learning to read in the familiar things about us the strange but intensely human story of the evolution of architectural styles and to understand their significance in our own lives.

Every American city, and most of our towns, contains examples of all the principal styles or periods in architecture, besides some of no legitimate parentage whatever.

This in itself is a plain exposition of a basic architectural truth, which we will find repeating itself over and over in all phases of the subject. It is that architecture is man's most self-revealing record of his struggle upward from barbarism to the complex civilization of today. It expresses intimately and unerringly his ambitions and ideals, his strength and his weakness, his ignorance and his awakening. The study of architectural progress must for this reason be also the study of human progress. History and this most permanent and all-embracing of the arts are thus most intimately united. There is nothing in architecture, down to the curve of a molding or the proportions of an individual brick, that has not its specific human reason. Often in the case of such trivial details as these we must go back through the centuries to some great crisis in human affairs for that reason.

The polyglot character of American architecture is an excellent example of this general truth. We are a young nation, composite in character, and not yet bound together by any great ties of common tradition. We are made up from all the nations of civilization. The Latin and the Saxon stand cheek by jowl with the Teuton and the Celt, and the progress of amalgamation, though more rapid than ever before in the world's history, has not yet been fast enough to produce anything like complete homogeneity. Our architecture in its odd mixtures of types perfectly reflects this state of things. It is Classic or Gothic, French, German, Spanish, or something else, with no one influence dominant—incohesive and with little continuity of growth.

Architecture, though the aesthetically sensitive may rail at it, is thus a prolific source of historical data, a most comprehensive and interesting text-book of which I shall make frequent use, and shall do my best to interpret simply and, I hope, interestingly.

Accepting, then, the dictum that architecture is a record of man's development, we seek first the basic forces, or motives, in the human advance, so that we may find the primary sources of architectural inspiration. What impelling ambition, in other words, has driven men to the astonishing feats of building that are our heritage ? A little thought gives us a comprehensive answer: Man's first purely human realization was of the value of material possessions, for which he went out into the wilderness to conquer and trade. His next step was the awakening of fear or respect for the mysterious, unaccountable forces of nature, the beginnings of religion, and the voluntary contribution of his finest material possession in the propitiation or glorification of these forces. We will look at this progression somewhat more closely in a few moments, but this gives us the fundamental truth for a basic formula or text which may be expressed thus: Trade subdues the wilderness, and science, with art, builds therein temples to the Ideal.

In pursuit of this idea, let us now step backward through the ages in search of the beginnings of trade, of science, and of idealism, those three primal factors in human development. How did man, in his progress through apehood, come to evolve these three elements of existence that have given us all we have of civilization, including, of course, our legacy of architecture, and on which we depend for all future progress ?

The basis of trade is material possession. It is not impossible to imagine the life of our arboreal ancestors at the time when they first began to value worldly goods. The desire for food was, of course, instinctive, and so apparently was the male's sense of possession of the female. The dawning of a reasoning faculty came a little later. The ape-man's habit of throwing missiles at intruders, from his aerial perch, changes into a habit of retaining in his paw the branch or club he has hereto-fore hurled. A fight or two at close quarters would teach him this. The particular value of a good, heavy, knobby club would soon dawn on him, and he would get into the way of carrying it about with him, or of hiding it in a convenient place.

Later we can imagine that the demand for good clubs became brisk. The most enterprising of the ape-men went out into the wilderness to hunt for them, and acquired a collection, which was prized highly and was constantly raided by neighbors. This subject of clubs, or what not, soon became so interesting that it formed a basis for social intercourse. Clubs were compared and, finally, exchanged---the first commercial transaction.

This possession of a club gave the ape-man confidence to remain longer on the ground, and at last to desert permanently the tree-tops for the more or less strenuous life below. This meant that he must become the protector of his females and young, as conditions held them together for a longer period than heretofore. In this way a new attachment grew, so that when a partner died he felt grief, and unable to comprehend finality evolved the primitive conception of future life.

The need of protection from foes for himself and family and the desire for physical comfort led the ape-man to occupy such caves as he could find. When they were too small, he made enlargements and piled debris around the 'mouth for future protection. In some such incident as this we probably had the birth of science, the constructive application of the reasoning faculties, and of architecture.

This ape-man---he of the bridged nose and straight hair—multiplied his power and comforts by the acquisition of better and more effective weapons, and the continued improvement of his cave along lines suggested in the interchange of ideas with his neighbors and by his own increasing inventiveness. The community grew with the increase of individual power, and with it developed sentiment—the clan spirit. Our newly evolved man became a chief, or king. His sense of importance expanded accordingly, and he began to consider even the great forces of nature as having some direct personal relation to him-self. What they were he did not know, and, naturally enough, he took them for enemies. When he found that his weapons were of no avail against them, he grew more afraid, and invested them with powers and personalities which they did not possess.

Man's next idea was to propitiate the unknown powers, a plan doubtless originating in his domestic experience. Logically his first thought was to offer them food. In order that this should not get into the hands of those for whom it was not intended, and the powers be unappeased, he chose for it a secret place in the forest, open to the sky and as far above the ground as he could raise it with stones. So we have the first altar and the beginning of the church. His visits to this place became more and more ceremonious as his imagination created greater demands of the unknown power, and thus grew the formalism of religious worship.

He also began to give to this power some of his own attributes, and as the young in his growing family imitated him because of his power and leadership, and offered him, through growing affection and respect, the good results which grew from emulation, so he in turn grew to imitate the powers beyond him, offering on his altar the choicest of his possessions.

As the ambition of the younger generation increased because of his example, so the attributes of this mighty unknown power stimulated the man's mental and moral growth. With God man also created idealism.

We find, then, at the very birth of the race, man going abroad among other men, to subdue the wilderness and to trade; and science, the constructive intelligence, building temples for the worship of the ideal.

This may seem an almost childishly confident way of dismissing that mysterious dawn-period of human life which so many great minds have attempted in ponderous tomes to reconstruct for us. Darwin and Haeckel and Muller, among others, devoted the best part of their lives to the synthesis. But it is important here only to indicate that those three elements of our racial life to-day were basic from the first, and have been the threefold thread of our worldly destiny down through the ages.

Trade ambition is the discovering and acquisitive force, science is the constructive capacity that trade ambition calls into being, and idealism is a master passion of the race, and levies tribute of the best from the race in every field. In so doing it begets the creative faculty, which in turn, operating under the inspiration of an ideal with enthusiasm, adds the element of beauty, and the result we call art.

We have traced the beginning of primitive idealism to the worship of the mysterious, the birth of religion, for we find it through all early times the dominant ideal in the production of architecture. Until the fifteenth century of our own era, the great "temples to the ideal" were actually religious edifices. Nevertheless, from earliest times a domestic ideal existed and expressed itself in dwellings, which have been enlarged, improved, and beautified through the ages to this day, as the domestic ideal rose and expanded. Somewhat later came the civic and national ideal in turn, and many others of lesser importance, all of which have called to their glorification the service of science in the creation of special, tributary architecture.

A close parallel to the development of architecture, which we have seen as a graven and structural language, exists in our spoken and written language. A brief examination would show that both languages are created and differentiated in response to the same subtle human forces. The parallel might even be traced historically, from age to age and from country to country, but a mere mention of it here suffices, and it strengthens our premise that architecture is an accurate and readable human document.

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Moslem Architecture

WE have seen that Christianity in its early days had little influence upon architecture, and that it did little towards asserting itself in this direction during the first 300 years of its existence. Far different was it with respect to a new religious movement which sprang up while the Byzantine empire was at the height of its power, in the sixth century of the Christian era—a movement which rapidly infected the East, sweeping over whole countries with an irresistible tide, and .at once leaving its impress upon every phase of art.

Mohammed, the leader of the new faith, lived from A.D. 570-652. SO 'sudden was the growth of his influence that within a century after his death he was acknowledged as the Prophet of God in Arabia, Egypt, and Syria, in Persia, in India as far as the Ganges, along the north of Africa, and in Spain. Under these circumstances the Mohammedan, a new architectural style, grew up, differing widely from the contemporary Christian architecture, and differing also in each of the various countries in which it prevailed.

The Arabs, who were the banner-bearers of the new Prophet, were a nomad and warlike race, but they were not great builders; they possessed, in fact, but little architecture of their own before the period of their conquests. As might be expected then, the earliest Mohammedan places of worship, or mosques, as they are called, were insignificant, and of simple form. Even at Mecca, the birth-place of the Prophet, the only temple of the Arabs-the sacred Kaabah—was nothing more than a square tower of little architectural importance.

The Koran, the sacred book of religious duties and precepts, contained no instructions for the followers of Mohammed with regard to the building of places of assembly or of worship. The faithful had their stated times for prayer when, turning their faces towards Mecca, they went through the prescribed forms; but for these ceremonies it was not necessary that there should be any assembling together: each man could offer up his prayers upon his own housetop. Nor were the mosques required—as in the case of temples of other religions—for the purpose of enshrining a sacred object or an image of the Deity, for Mecca was the one place sacred to all Mohammedans.

At first, then, there was little building in connection with the new religion : such mosques as were erected were merely shelters for purposes of prayer and retirement, of simplest form and, in the majority of cases, adapted from old buildings. When the Arabs began to erect new mosques, being without an architecture of their own, they were obliged to employ the native architects and workmen—a fact which accounts for the consider-able differences of styles found in the different countries.

The most important of the early works were the mosques of Amrow at Cairo (A.D. 642) and of El Aksah (A.D. 690) at Jerusalem. These earlier buildings generally took the form of arcaded cloisters with flat timber roofs one story high, enclosing a large square courtyard. On the side towards Mecca the cloister was much deeper and contained several rows of columns. On this plan was the magnificent mosque of Ibn Touloun, also at Cairo, built towards the end of the ninth century. Here the arcades of pointed arches spring from series of columns. On the side of the building nearest Mecca the arcades are five deep; in the centre of the outer wall on this side is the mihrab, or prayer-niche, indicating the direction of the sacred city, one of the indispensable features of the mosque-plan. At an early date minarets were added—slender towers from which the call to prayer was made to the Mohammedans throughout the city. The minarets assumed varied elegant forms, and added much picturesque ness to the exterior design. Usually they were octagonal, upon a square base, the upper part being circular, and marked by a projecting balcony from which the prayer-call was sounded. The roofs of the earlier mosques were flat and of wooden construction, but towards the end of the tenth century vaulting was introduced ; and the vaulted roofs soon became one of the most characteristic, as they were the most beautiful, of the features of Saracenic architecture. In the tombs of the Caliphs, built in the eleventh century, and in the mosques of Barkouk (1149), of Sultan Hassan (1355), and of Kait Bey (1463), all at Cairo, we find not only this form of roof, but increasing skill in workmanship and richness in design.

Every example shows that the architecture of the Arabs was essentially decorative rather than structural. Externally the domes were decorated with rich and intricate geometric designs; similar but more elaborate treatment was applied to the whole of the interior. The dome—after the Byzantine fashion—was carried on pendentives, which were richly decorated with honeycomb ornament. This honeycomb corbelling was constantly used by the Arabs in their roofs, for it proved an effective method of filling up the awkward corners resulting from the practice of carrying octagonal walls upon a square base. The whole of the mosque interior was treated with lavish decoration, in which color played a most important part. Ceilings were panelled out with intricately carved beams and were enriched with harmonious patterns; niches were resplendent with brightly colored honeycomb roof-corbels ; all the wall surfaces were encrusted with exquisite marbles or with brilliant arrangements of tiles, in which the Arab showed his fertility of invention equally with his feeling for color. In accordance with the rules laid down in the Koran, no imitation of natural objects was permitted in the decoration ; the designers were there-fore restricted to the use of flowing and geometric patterns, which thus became characteristic of their work. In many cases inscriptions from the Koran were introduced, the ornamental Arabic lettering forming a very effective embellishment. An interesting feature, which marks the architecture of the Arabs to the present day, was the delicate tracery which frequently filled the windows and the wall-openings with complicated geometric designs.

In addition to the semicircular arch, three other forms are found in Mohammedan buildings for the arcades and door openings. In Syria and Egypt occurs the pointed arch, similar to that used by the Gothic architects of Western Europe, In India and in Persia the most common form has the curves near the apex bent slightly upwards, giving to the arch an outline like the keel of a vessel; this form is sometimes called the keel arch. The third form, the horse-shoe arch, is most frequently met with amongst the works of the Moors in Spain.

Mention of the Moors recalls the fact that some of the most splendid examples of Arabic architecture are found farther west and in the continent of Europe. With the exception of the mosques of Cairo, few important works were produced in Northern Africa. When, however, the Moors invaded Spain in 710, there sprang up in that country a new Arabian empire whose architecture was destined to rival that of the East.

The first important building was the mosque at Cordova, begun in 786 by the Caliph Abd-er-Rahman. This consisted of an arcaded hall in the form of a parallelogram 420 feet by 375 feet—thus covering a larger area than any Christian church with the exception of S. Peter's at Rome. The height, however, was not more than 30 feet; the ceiling was of wood richly carved and decorated, and was carried upon seventeen rows of thirty-three columns each, all having two tiers of horseshoe arches. The mihrab-niche, indicating the direction of Mecca, was richly encrusted with delicate carving and with mosaics. This sanctuary at Cordova, which was rebuilt in the tenth century, is considered by Fergusson to be the most beautiful and elaborate specimen of Moorish architecture in Spain, and of the best age." Unfortunately but little of the great mosque re-mains in its original state.

Fate has been kinder to the great citadel pal-ace at Granada known as the Alhambra—the Mecca of travelers in Spain at the present day. This great work was begun in 1 248 by Mohammedben-Alhamar, after his expulsion from Seville, and was completed in the beginning of the fourteenth century. Those who have not been able to visit the Alhambra are afforded the opportunity of studying the wealth of its design in the magnificent illustrations and drawings of Owen Jones; interesting reproductions of parts of the building, by this artist, may be seen at the Crystal Palace.

The Alhambra is considered the gem of Hispano-Moresque art—a distinction due as much to its excellent state of preservation as to the delicate beauty of its work. Two large courts occupy the greater portion of the ground-plan: the more celebrated of these, the Court of the Lions, is surrounded by light arcades, with a central fountain supported by twelve lions, from which it takes its name. The whole of the interior is covered with delicate ornamentation of exquisite beauty, to which the harmonious coloring adds wonderful richness and charm.

The Alcazar (castle) at Seville, an earlier building than the Alhambra, was probably even more magnificent, but it has become much dilapidated, and its character has been destroyed by alterations. Of greater interest, in the present day, is the Giralda in the same city, a building in the form of a massive square tower, not unlike a minaret on a grand scale. Unlike the Moslem builders in the East, however, the Moors in Spain never built minarets in connection with their mosque architecture, and the Giralda appears not to have been constructed for the purpose of the call to prayer.

Mohammedan architecture flourished in Spain until the reconquest of the country by the Christians and the expulsion of the Moors in 1492. The Moors had obtained a footing also in Sicily, whence they were driven out at the end of the eleventh century, leaving behind them buildings which very strongly influenced the architecture of the Christian builders who succeeded them in the island.

Upon the capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453, the Christian churches there fell into the hands of the Mohammedans. The church of Hagia Sophia, the masterpiece of the Byzantine builders, was at once converted into a mosque, and, strange to say, served as the model for the architecture which sprang up to meet the new religious requirements. This new style culminated, just a century later, in the Suleimaniyeh, the great mosque built by Soliman the Magnificent in 1553.

Moslem Architecture Building














Golden Temple Amritsar India













Omar Saffudin Mosque, Brunei



















Haghia Sophia Museum, Turki

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All About Architecture

Story Of Architecture - Preface

ARCHITECTURE, "the most useful of the fine arts and the finest of the useful arts," may be defined as the art of ornamental construction ; not ornamental in the sense of decorated but in harmony of distribution of mass, in beauty of proportion. For all its vast variety, it is based on three simple constructive principles. The first is the lintel, in which two uprights support a crosspiece, the form seen in the majestic temples of Egypt and the classic beauty of the art of Greece. The second is the arch or vault, the use of which was perfected by the Romans and which is characteristic of Roman architecture and its derivatives for the spanning of large spaces. The third principle is the truss or compound beam, made up of several subordinate members, each one of which is intended to resist a particular stress, which is seen in its highest development in the modern steel bridge.

These three principles have guided the development of the art in every land, but their incorporation in the typical architecture of each nation has been influenced by the three great formative factors of race, climate and religion.

These factors have conjoined to produce certain well defined styles, or varied phases of the art, which are commonly taken as the basis for architectural classification. The architecture of Egypt is the oldest now extant, and with it the story of the art in this little book opens. Almost contemporaneously with Egyptian architecture another style arose in Mesopotamia, and both of them influenced the architecture of the Greeks. The Romans in turn applied the Greek details to the arched construction of the Etruscans. After the division of the Roman Empire the Byzantine school arose in the East and inspired the Mohammedan or Saracenic style, which swept westward through northern Africa into Spain and eastward into India. In northern and western Europe, meanwhile, an evolution from the Roman basilica culminated in the Gothic style of the Middle Ages. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the Gothic gradually gave place to the Renaissance style, a revival of Roman forms. Other styles arose in India, China and Japan, and among the Aztecs and Incas of America, but they have had little influence on the modern electric architecture of the West, which is based almost entirely on the styles
which had their origin in Europe.


The Human Factors In Architecture

FACING the vast amount of literature on architectural history, it would be almost an impertinence to offer the public another book were it not that so little has been written that may be readily understood and enjoyed by those without technical training.

I have undertaken to discuss this subtle and fascinating expression of human development from the viewpoint of familiar, everyday experience here in our American homes. With the construction and design of the buildings on our own streets in city, town, or village, as examples, we will trace the growth of form and detail back through the ages, learning to read in the familiar things about us the strange but intensely human story of the evolution of architectural styles and to understand their significance in our own lives.

Every American city, and most of our towns, contains examples of all the principal styles or periods in architecture, besides some of no legitimate parentage whatever.

This in itself is a plain exposition of a basic architectural truth, which we will find repeating itself over and over in all phases of the subject. It is that architecture is man's most self-revealing record of his struggle upward from barbarism to the complex civilization of today. It expresses intimately and unerringly his ambitions and ideals, his strength and his weakness, his ignorance and his awakening. The study of architectural progress must for this reason be also the study of human progress. History and this most permanent and all-embracing of the arts are thus most intimately united. There is nothing in architecture, down to the curve of a molding or the proportions of an individual brick, that has not its specific human reason. Often in the case of such trivial details as these we must go back through the centuries to some great crisis in human affairs for that reason.

The polyglot character of American architecture is an excellent example of this general truth. We are a young nation, composite in character, and not yet bound together by any great ties of common tradition. We are made up from all the nations of civilization. The Latin and the Saxon stand cheek by jowl with the Teuton and the Celt, and the progress of amalgamation, though more rapid than ever before in the world's history, has not yet been fast enough to produce anything like complete homogeneity. Our architecture in its odd mixtures of types perfectly reflects this state of things. It is Classic or Gothic, French, German, Spanish, or something else, with no one influence dominant—incohesive and with little continuity of growth.

Architecture, though the aesthetically sensitive may rail at it, is thus a prolific source of historical data, a most comprehensive and interesting text-book of which I shall make frequent use, and shall do my best to interpret simply and, I hope, interestingly.

Accepting, then, the dictum that architecture is a record of man's development, we seek first the basic forces, or motives, in the human advance, so that we may find the primary sources of architectural inspiration. What impelling ambition, in other words, has driven men to the astonishing feats of building that are our heritage ? A little thought gives us a comprehensive answer: Man's first purely human realization was of the value of material possessions, for which he went out into the wilderness to conquer and trade. His next step was the awakening of fear or respect for the mysterious, unaccountable forces of nature, the beginnings of religion, and the voluntary contribution of his finest material possession in the propitiation or glorification of these forces. We will look at this progression somewhat more closely in a few moments, but this gives us the fundamental truth for a basic formula or text which may be expressed thus: Trade subdues the wilderness, and science, with art, builds therein temples to the Ideal.

In pursuit of this idea, let us now step backward through the ages in search of the beginnings of trade, of science, and of idealism, those three primal factors in human development. How did man, in his progress through apehood, come to evolve these three elements of existence that have given us all we have of civilization, including, of course, our legacy of architecture, and on which we depend for all future progress ?

The basis of trade is material possession. It is not impossible to imagine the life of our arboreal ancestors at the time when they first began to value worldly goods. The desire for food was, of course, instinctive, and so apparently was the male's sense of possession of the female. The dawning of a reasoning faculty came a little later. The ape-man's habit of throwing missiles at intruders, from his aerial perch, changes into a habit of retaining in his paw the branch or club he has hereto-fore hurled. A fight or two at close quarters would teach him this. The particular value of a good, heavy, knobby club would soon dawn on him, and he would get into the way of carrying it about with him, or of hiding it in a convenient place.

Later we can imagine that the demand for good clubs became brisk. The most enterprising of the ape-men went out into the wilderness to hunt for them, and acquired a collection, which was prized highly and was constantly raided by neighbors. This subject of clubs, or what not, soon became so interesting that it formed a basis for social intercourse. Clubs were compared and, finally, exchanged---the first commercial transaction.

This possession of a club gave the ape-man confidence to remain longer on the ground, and at last to desert permanently the tree-tops for the more or less strenuous life below. This meant that he must become the protector of his females and young, as conditions held them together for a longer period than heretofore. In this way a new attachment grew, so that when a partner died he felt grief, and unable to comprehend finality evolved the primitive conception of future life.

The need of protection from foes for himself and family and the desire for physical comfort led the ape-man to occupy such caves as he could find. When they were too small, he made enlargements and piled debris around the 'mouth for future protection. In some such incident as this we probably had the birth of science, the constructive application of the reasoning faculties, and of architecture.

This ape-man---he of the bridged nose and straight hair—multiplied his power and comforts by the acquisition of better and more effective weapons, and the continued improvement of his cave along lines suggested in the interchange of ideas with his neighbors and by his own increasing inventiveness. The community grew with the increase of individual power, and with it developed sentiment—the clan spirit. Our newly evolved man became a chief, or king. His sense of importance expanded accordingly, and he began to consider even the great forces of nature as having some direct personal relation to him-self. What they were he did not know, and, naturally enough, he took them for enemies. When he found that his weapons were of no avail against them, he grew more afraid, and invested them with powers and personalities which they did not possess.

Man's next idea was to propitiate the unknown powers, a plan doubtless originating in his domestic experience. Logically his first thought was to offer them food. In order that this should not get into the hands of those for whom it was not intended, and the powers be unappeased, he chose for it a secret place in the forest, open to the sky and as far above the ground as he could raise it with stones. So we have the first altar and the beginning of the church. His visits to this place became more and more ceremonious as his imagination created greater demands of the unknown power, and thus grew the formalism of religious worship.

He also began to give to this power some of his own attributes, and as the young in his growing family imitated him because of his power and leadership, and offered him, through growing affection and respect, the good results which grew from emulation, so he in turn grew to imitate the powers beyond him, offering on his altar the choicest of his possessions.

As the ambition of the younger generation increased because of his example, so the attributes of this mighty unknown power stimulated the man's mental and moral growth. With God man also created idealism.

We find, then, at the very birth of the race, man going abroad among other men, to subdue the wilderness and to trade; and science, the constructive intelligence, building temples for the worship of the ideal.

This may seem an almost childishly confident way of dismissing that mysterious dawn-period of human life which so many great minds have attempted in ponderous tomes to reconstruct for us. Darwin and Haeckel and Muller, among others, devoted the best part of their lives to the synthesis. But it is important here only to indicate that those three elements of our racial life to-day were basic from the first, and have been the threefold thread of our worldly destiny down through the ages.

Trade ambition is the discovering and acquisitive force, science is the constructive capacity that trade ambition calls into being, and idealism is a master passion of the race, and levies tribute of the best from the race in every field. In so doing it begets the creative faculty, which in turn, operating under the inspiration of an ideal with enthusiasm, adds the element of beauty, and the result we call art.

We have traced the beginning of primitive idealism to the worship of the mysterious, the birth of religion, for we find it through all early times the dominant ideal in the production of architecture. Until the fifteenth century of our own era, the great "temples to the ideal" were actually religious edifices. Nevertheless, from earliest times a domestic ideal existed and expressed itself in dwellings, which have been enlarged, improved, and beautified through the ages to this day, as the domestic ideal rose and expanded. Somewhat later came the civic and national ideal in turn, and many others of lesser importance, all of which have called to their glorification the service of science in the creation of special, tributary architecture.

A close parallel to the development of architecture, which we have seen as a graven and structural language, exists in our spoken and written language. A brief examination would show that both languages are created and differentiated in response to the same subtle human forces. The parallel might even be traced historically, from age to age and from country to country, but a mere mention of it here suffices, and it strengthens our premise that architecture is an accurate and readable human document.

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