ked out
theoretically with much minuteness of detail, and are known to every
student of the science of cities, but very little of it all has been
realized in a practical way--certainly not on this side of the water,
where individual rights are held so sacred that a property owner may
commit any kind of an architectural nuisance so long as he confines
it to his own front yard. The strength of IS, the weakness of _should
be_, conflicting interests and legislative cowardice are responsible
for the highly irrational manner in which our cities have grown great.

The search for spiritual light in the midst of materialism finds
unconscious symbolization in a way other than this seeking for the
sun. It is in the amazing development of artificial illumination. From
a purely utilitarian standpoint there is almost nothing that cannot
now be accomplished with light, short of making the ether itself
luminiferous. The aesthetic development of this field, however, can be
said to have scarcely begun. The so recent San Francisco Exposition
witnessed the first successful effort of any importance to enhance the
effect of architecture by artificial illumination, and to use colored
light with a view to its purely pictorial value. Though certain
buildings have since been illuminated with excellent effect, it
remains true that the corset, chewing-gum, beer and automobile
sky signs of our Great White Ways indicate the height to which our
imagination has risen in utilizing this Promethean gift in any but
necessary ways. Interior lighting, except negatively, has not been
dealt with from the standpoint of beauty, but of efficiency; the
engineer has preempted this field to the exclusion of the artist.

All this is the result of the atrophy of that faculty to worship and
wonder which alone induces the mood from which the creation of beauty
springs. Light we regard only as a convenience "to see things by"
instead of as the power and glory that it inherently is. Its intense
and potent vibrations and the rainbow glory of its colour beat at the
door of consciousness in vain. When we awaken to these things we shall
organize light into a language of spontaneous emotion, just as from
sound music was organized.

It is beside the purpose of this essay to attempt to trace the
evolution of this new art form, made possible by modern invention, to
indicate what phases it is likely to pass through on the way to what
perfections, but that it is bound to add a