soaring
above it, winged and living.

And when one observes that this mode of expression is not only the most
conservative, but also the most simple, the most convenient, the most
practicable for all; when one reflects that it does not drag after it
bulky baggage, and does not set in motion a heavy apparatus; when one
compares thought forced, in order to transform itself into an edifice,
to put in motion four or five other arts and tons of gold, a whole
mountain of stones, a whole forest of timber-work, a whole nation of
workmen; when one compares it to the thought which becomes a book, and
for which a little paper, a little ink, and a pen suffice,--how can one
be surprised that human intelligence should have quitted architecture
for printing? Cut the primitive bed of a river abruptly with a canal
hollowed out below its level, and the river will desert its bed.

Behold how, beginning with the discovery of printing, architecture
withers away little by little, becomes lifeless and bare. How one feels
the water sinking, the sap departing, the thought of the times and of
the people withdrawing from it! The chill is almost imperceptible in
the fifteenth century; the press is, as yet, too weak, and, at the
most, draws from powerful architecture a superabundance of life.
But practically beginning with the sixteenth century, the malady of
architecture is visible; it is no longer the expression of society; it
becomes classic art in a miserable manner; from being Gallic, European,
indigenous, it becomes Greek and Roman; from being true and modern,
it becomes pseudo-classic. It is this decadence which is called the
Renaissance. A magnificent decadence, however, for the ancient Gothic
genius, that sun which sets behind the gigantic press of Mayence, still
penetrates for a while longer with its rays that whole hybrid pile of
Latin arcades and Corinthian columns.

It is that setting sun which we mistake for the dawn.

Nevertheless, from the moment when architecture is no longer anything
but an art like any other; as soon as it is no longer the total art, the
sovereign art, the tyrant art,--it has no longer the power to retain
the other arts. So they emancipate themselves, break the yoke of the
architect, and take themselves off, each one in its own direction. Each
one of them gains by this divorce. Isolation aggrandizes everything.
Sculpture becomes statuary, the image trade becomes painting, the canon
becomes music. One would pr