Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 2.djvu/401

Definition and Characteristics of Industrial Art. 365 place in right of their beauty, that beauty is only in some sort an excrescence, it does not affect the primary object of the matters to which it is applied, although it may greatly increase their value and interest. In view of this definition, ^tjnay be asserted^ that architecture itself is one of the industrial, arts^ The first duty_of the con- structor is to make his building well fit ted for jhe object it has to serve. The house must afford a proper shelter for its in- habitants, the tomb must preserve the corpse entrusted to it from all chance of profanation, the temple must shield the statue or the symbol of the god from curious glances, and afford con- venient space for ritual celebrations. These requirements may be fulfilled by edifices which have no pretensions to beauty. With a roof and a certain number of naked walls, it is always possible to cover and enclose a given space, and to divide it into as many portions as may be desired. Such a process has nothing in common with art. Art steps in when the builder attempts to endow his work with that symmetry which does not exclude variety, with nobility of proportion, and with the charm of a decoration in which both painter and sculptor play their parts. The constructor then gives place to the architect. The latter, of course, always keeps the practical end in view, but it is not his sole preoccupation. The house, as he builds it, has to respond to all the wants, intellectual as well as corporeal, of civilized man ; the tomb must embody his ideas of death and a future life ; the maofnificent dimensions and the goro^eous decora- tions of the temple must give expression to the inexpressible, must symbolize the divine majesty to the eyes of men, and help to make it comprehensible by the crowds that come to sacrifice and pray. In all this, the role played by art is so preponderant that it would be unjust to class architecture among the industrial arts. The ambition of those who built the temple of imen, at Karnak, or that of Athene, on the Acropolis, was to produce a work which should give faithful .expression_to the highest thoughts which the human mind can conceive. In one sense, architec- ture ma)r be called" tTie first ~of the 'arts. In those great com- positions whose remains we study with such reverence, whose arrangements we endeavour with such care to re-establish, it was the architect who determined what part the painter and the