and
decoration were alike traditional and imposed by ulterior practical or
religious purposes; yet, by good fortune and by grace of that
rationality which unified Greek life, they fell together easily into a
harmony such as imagination could never have devised had it been invited
to decree pleasure-domes for non-existent beings. Had the Greek gods
been hideous, their images and fable could not so readily have
beautified the place where they were honoured; and had the structural
theme and uses of the temple been more complicated, they would not have
lent themselves so well to decoration without being submerged beneath
it.

[Sidenote: Relations of the two in Gothic art.]

In some ways the ideal Gothic church attained a similar perfection,
because there too the structure remained lucid and predominant, while it
was enriched by many necessary appointments--altars, stalls, screens,
chantries--which, while really the _raison d'etre_ of the whole edifice,
aesthetically regarded, served for its ornaments. It may be doubted,
however, whether Gothic construction was well grounded enough in utility
to be a sound and permanent basis for beauty; and the extreme
instability of Gothic style, the feverish, inconstancy of architects
straining after effects never, apparently, satisfactory when achieved,
shows that something was wrong and artificial in the situation. The
structure, in becoming an ornament, ceased to be anything else and could
be discarded by any one whose fancy preferred a different image.

For this reason a building like the cathedral of Amiens, where a
structural system is put through consistently, is far from representing
mediaeval art in its full and ideal essence; it is rather an incidental
achievement, a sport in which an adventitious interest is, for a moment,
emphasised overwhelmingly. Intelligence here comes to the fore, and a
sort of mathematical virtuosity: but it was not mathematical virtuosity
nor even intelligence to which, in Christian art, the leading role
properly belonged. What structural elucidation did for church
architecture was much like what scholastic elucidation did for church
dogma: it insinuated a logic into the traditional edifice which was far
from representing its soul or its genuine value. The dialectic
introduced might be admirable in itself, in its lay and abstruse
rationality; but it could not be applied to the poetic material in hand
without rendering it absurd and sterile. The given