h further justifies the above analysis. For sensation is the matter
of ideas; all representation is such only in its function; in its
existence it remains mere feeling. Decoration, by stimulating the
senses, not only brings a primary satisfaction with it, independent of
any that may supervene, but it furnishes an element of effect which no
higher beauty can ever render unwelcome or inappropriate, since any
higher beauty, in moving the mind, must give it a certain sensuous and
emotional colouring. Decoration is accordingly an independent art, to be
practised for its own sake, in obedience to elementary plastic
instincts. It is fundamental in design, for everything structural or
significant produces in the first instance some sensuous impression and
figures as a spot or pattern in the field of vision. The fortunate
architect is he who has, for structural skeleton in his work, a form in
itself decorative and beautiful, who can carry it out in a beautiful
material, and who finally is suffered to add so much decoration as the
eye may take in with pleasure, without losing the expression and
lucidity of the whole.

It is impossible, however, to imagine beforehand what these elements
should be or how to combine them. The problem must exist before its
solution can be found. The forms of good taste and beauty which a man
can think of or esteem are limited by the scope of his previous
experience. It would be impossible to foresee or desire a beauty which
had not somehow grown up of itself and been recognised receptively. A
satisfaction cannot be conceived ideally when neither its organ nor its
occasion has as yet arisen. That ideal conception, to exist, would have
to bring both into play. The fine arts are butter to man's daily bread;
there is no conceiving or creating them except as they spring out of
social exigencies. Their types are imposed by utility: their
ornamentation betrays the tradition that happens to envelop and
diversify them; their expression and dignity are borrowed from the
company they keep in the world.

[Sidenote: Its alliance with structure in Greek architecture.]

The Greek temple, for instance, if we imagine it in its glory, with all
its colour and furniture, was a type of human art at its best, where
decoration, without in the least restricting itself, took naturally an
exquisitely subordinate and pervasive form: each detail had its own
splendour and refinement, yet kept its place in the whole. Structure