spiritual wealth; in the
fusion of these two elements in a higher intuition. It is the balance of
the two characteristics of genius, inexhaustible wealth and the striving
for harmonious expression. It marked the first powerful working of the
Teutonic spirit on the world; its metaphysical yearning together with a
genuine love of nature, found in this art its own peculiar traditionless
expression, just as it found expression in the newly-evolved mysticism
which no longer re-echoed Aristotle and his commentators, but drew
inspiration from its own intuition. For this reason Gothic architecture
never became acclimatised in Italy. The soaring tower, more especially,
never appealed to the Italian architect.

Ornamentation and capitals, previously a combination of geometrical
figures, which may have been architecturally great and imposing, but was
always more or less formal and rigid, disappeared; the new masters,
whose names have been forgotten, looked round them and drew inspiration
from nature. The forest trees of Central Europe became pillars; grouped
together, apparently haphazard, they reflected a mystical nature pulsing
with mysterious life. Spreading and ramifying, growing together in an
impenetrable network of foliage, they bore buds, leaves and fruits.
Every pinnacle became a sprig, even the pendant icicles reappeared in
the gable-boards. But the assimilation of natural objects did not cease
there; tiny animals, light as a feather, run over the tendrils, lizards,
birds, even the gnomes of German mythology, find their way into the
Gothic cathedral. Not the traditional Greek acanthus leaf, but the
foliage of the North-European oak grows under the hands of the sculptor.
Even the cross is twisted into a flower; the sacro-sanct symbol of the
Christian religion is newly conceived, newly interpreted and moulded so
that it may have a place. The Gothic cathedral with its soaring arches
free from all heaviness is the perfect expression of that cosmic feeling
that inspired Eckhart and reached its artistic perfection in Dante.

But the soul of the mystic in stone contains the same elements as the
soul of Eckhart, who was also a schoolman. The confused and complex
scholastic world of ideas which corresponded so well with the mediaeval
temper and, together with the new art, had emanated from Paris, is
closely akin to Gothic architecture. For the Gothic style and
scholastic thought share the characteristics of the infinitely
constr