CH. V THE LAMP OF LIFE 193

men make, much of their being passes in a kind of dream, in which they indeed move, and play their parts sufficiently, to the eyes of their fellow dreamers, but have no clear consciousness of what is around them, or within them; blind to the one, insensible to the other, nwqroi.¹ I would not press the definition into its darker application to the dull heart and heavy ear; I have to do with it only as it refers to the too frequent condition of natural existence, whether of nations or individuals, settling commonly upon them in proportion to their age. The life of a nation is usually, like the flow of a lava stream, first bright and fierce, then languid and covered, at last advancing only by the tumbling over and over of its frozen blocks. And that last condition is a sad one to look upon. All the steps are marked most clearly in the arts, and in Architecture more than in any other; for it, being especially dependent, as we have just said, on the warmth of the true life, is also peculiarly sensible of the hemlock cold of the false:

expression of mental vitality, so they are peculiarly liable to become the expression of this pseudo-vitality.

“Yet do not let it be supposed that I mean any idea of stubbornness or absolute ungovernableness to be attached to the definition of True Vitality. All real life is known by its depending on nourishment from without; by its being rooted in, or traceable to, something precedent to itself; by its being in a certain degree ductile, mobile, alterable, and sensible: only it is not passively so, not slavishly so. It accepts nourishment only of a certain kind, chooses what is good for it, and rejects the rest. It does not clutch everything offered to it with convulsive acquisitiveness-it yields to influence of certain kind-but only in degrees consistent with its own independence. In proportion to its youthfulness, it is yielding to external force, and eager to receive external nourishment: in proportion to its age, it is stable and fruitful. Now there are certains periods in the life of nations and individuals in which this real life is strong and progressive: others in which it is languid and encrusted, like a stream of lava growing cold-others in which it is tending to utter extinction-and yet making some advance like the head of the stream of lava by the tumbling over and over of its frozen blocks. At last it ceases altogether, and the pseudo-life takes or may take its place. There is nothing in which these steps are so clearly and consistently manifested as in the Art of nations: and as it has just been said that Architecture is especially dependent on the expression of human vitality-so it is especially liable to be corrupted by the spurious vitality which succeeds it.

“The architecture so corrupted-which may be properly described as Dead architecture, of which that of our own day throughout Europe is the most melancholy example, may be always recognised by the absence of certain characters which I shall endeavour to explain; although they are not so strictly defined.”]

¹ [The word is used by Plato and other authors in the sense of sluggish, stupid, torpid.]

VIII. N

[Version 0.04: March 2008]