CHAPTER V

THE LAMP OF LIFE

APHORISM 23. All things are noble in proportion to their fulness of Life.²

§ 1. AMONG the countless analogies by which the nature and relations of the human soul are illustrated in the material creation, none are more striking than the impressions inseparably connected with the active and dormant states of matter. I have elsewhere¹ endeavoured to show, that no inconsiderable part of the essential characters of Beauty dependend on the expression of vital energy in organic things, or on the subjection to such energy, of things naturally passive and powerless. I need not here repeat, of what was then advanced, more than the statement which I believe will meet with general acceptance, that things in other respects alike, as in their substance, or uses, or outward forms, are noble or ignoble in proportion to the fulness of the life which either they themselves enjoy, or of whose action they bear the evidence, as sea sands are made beautiful by their bearing the seal of the motion of the waters. And this is especially true of all objects which bear upon them the impress of the highest order of creative life, that is to say, of the mind of man: they become noble or ignoble in proportion to the amount of the energy of that mind which has visibly been employed upon them. But most peculiarly and imperatively does the rule hold with respect to the creations of Architecture, which being properly capable of no other life than this, and being not essentially composed of things pleasant in themselves,-as music of sweet sounds, or painting of fair colours, but of inert

¹ [Modern Painters, vol. ii. sec. i. chs. xii.-xiv.]

² [The text of this aphorism, in black-letter in the 1880 edition, is from “that things in other respects alike ...” down to the end of § 1.]

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[Version 0.04: March 2008]