Page:Fineartasketchi01wyatgoog.djvu/82

themselves treated of were considered to be as nothing when weighed in the balance against what man demanded for his accommodation and gratification. He was to be the lord.

In the mediæval theory, on the other hand, man was regarded as comparatively nothing. Each variety of matter was considered to possess properties and rights of its own, which man could in no wise contravene with impunity. The object gave the law, and not man. Hence the term objective as applied to analogous theories.

Between the demands which the necessities of every occasion made to be complied with and satisfied, and those which sprang out of the materials with which man had to deal, a natural series of laws and regulations were supposed, as it were, to be called into being by nature; and by sequences of cause and effect over which man could exert comparatively little command, he became the servant rather than the lord, when called upon to act in the capacity of creator of beauty. The one system supposed that man was to do all, and the other that nature was to do three parts, and man one only.

The above may be regarded as a popular explanation of the terms subjective and objective when used in art phraseology, the present being scarcely a fitting occasion for the discussion of those more complicated significations which have been attributed to the terms, mainly by German metaphysicians. Others may teach you, far better than I can, the value of the. "ego," and "non ego," the I and non I, of Kant, Hégel, Schlégel and Fichté.

It may be well for us also to avoid dwelling too long upon the exceedingly debateable ground as to whether theory in architecture preceded creation of structure in accordance with that theory, or whether it was from such structure that the theories were framed. Personally, I incline to the latter belief, to a considerable extent at all events, since I hold it as most probable that improvement in structure and improvement in theory obtained tangible shape almost pari passu.