The World as Will and Idea, Vol. I — Arthur Schopenhauer, trans. Haldane & Kemp
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The translator’s English as printed (R. B. Haldane & J. Kemp). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
Unlike the works of the other arts, those of architecture are very seldom executed for purely aesthetic enda These are generally subordinated to other useful ends which are foreign to art itself. Thus the great merit of the architect consists in achieving and attaining the pure aesthetic ends, in spite of their subordination to otherp. 281 ends which are foreign to them. This he does by cleverly adapting them in a variety of ways to the arbitrary ends in view, and by rightly judging which form of cesthetical architectonic beauty is compatible and may be associated with a temple, which with a palace, which with a prison, and so forth. The more a harsh climate increases these demands of necessity and utility, determines them definitely, and prescribes them more inevitably, the less free play has beauty in architecture. In the mild climate of India, Egypt, Greece, and Home, wKere ^e demands of necessity were fewer and less definite, architecture could follow its aesthetic ends with the greatest freedom. But imder a northern sky this was sordy hindered. Here, when caissons, pointed roofs and towers were what was demanded, architecture could only unfold its own beauty within very narrow limits, and therefore it was obliged to make amends by resorting all the more to the borrowed ornaments of sculpture, as is seen in Gothic architecture.
We thus see that architecture is greatly restricted by the demands of necessi^ and utility ; but oh the otheii hand it has in them a very powerful support, for, on account of the magnitude and costliness of its works, and the narrow sphere of its aesthetic effect, it could not continue to exist merely as a fine art, if it had not also, as a useful and necessary profession, a firm and honourable place among the occupations of men. It is the want of this that prevents another art from taking its place beside architecture as a sister art, although in an sesthetical point of view it is quite properly to be classed along with it as its counterpart; I mean artistic arrangements of water. Eor what architecture accomplishes for the Idea of gravity when it appears in connection with that of rigidity, hydraulics accomplishes for the same Idea, when it is connected with fluidity, i.e., formlessness, the greatest mobility and transparency. Leaping waterfalls foaming and tumbling over rocks,
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THE WORLD AS IDEA.
BK. III.
cataracts dispersed into floating spray, springs gushing up as high columns of water, and clear reflecting lakes, reveal the Ideas of fluid and heavy matter, in precisely the same way as the works of architecture unfold the Ideas of rigid matter. Artistic hydraulics, however, obtains no support from practical hydraulics, for, as a rule, their ends cannot be combined ; yet, in exceptional cases, this happens ; for example, in the Cascata di Trevi at Rpme.^
I 44. What the two arts we have spoken of accomplish for these lowest grades of the objectivity of will, is performed for the higher grades of vegetable nature by artistic horticulture. The landscape beauty of a scene consists, for the most part, in the multiplicity of natural objects which are present in it, and then in the fact that they are clearly separated, appear distinctly, and yet exhibit a fitting connection and alternation. Those two conditions are assisted and promoted by landscape-gardening, but it has by no means such a mastery over its material as architecture, and therefore its effect is limited. The beauty with which it is concerned belongs almost exclusively to nature ; it has done little for it ; and, on the other hand, it can do little against unfavourable nature, and when nature works, not for it, but against it, its achievements are smalL
The vegetable world offers itself everywhere for aesthetic enjoyment without the medium of art ; but so far as it is an object of art, it belongs principally to landscapepainting; to the province of which all the rest of unconscious nature also belongs. In paintings of still life, and of mere architecture, ruins, interiors of churches, &c., the subjective side of aesthetic pleasure is predominant, i.e., our satisfaction does not lie principally in the direct comprehension of the represented Ideas, but rather in the subjective correlative of this comprehension, pure, willless knowing. For, because the painter lets us see these ^ Of. Chap. 35 of Su{^lement
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