Page:The World as Will and Idea - Schopenhauer, tr. Haldane and Kemp - Volume 3.djvu/202

186 thus so far are determined a priori, it comes out clearly how perverse is the thought, so often repeated, that the stems of trees, or even (which unfortunately even "Vitruvius," iv. 1, expresses) the human form has been the prototype of the column. For if the form of the column were for architecture a purely accidental one, taken from without, it could never appeal to us so harmoniously and satisfactorily whenever we behold it in its proper symmetry; nor, on the other hand, could every even slight disproportion of it be felt at once by the fine and cultivated sense as disagreeable and disturbing, like a false note in music. This is rather only possible because, according to the given end and means, all the rest is essentially determined a priori, as in music, according to the given melody and key, the whole harmony is essentially so determined. And, like music, architecture in general is also not an imitative art, although both are often falsely taken to be so.

Æsthetic satisfaction, as was fully explained in the text, always depends upon the apprehension of a (Platonic) Idea. For architecture, considered merely as a fine art, the Ideas of the lowest grades of nature, such as gravity, rigidity, and cohesion, are the peculiar theme; but not, as has hitherto been assumed, merely regular form, proportion, and symmetry, which, as something purely geometrical, properties of space, are not Ideas, and therefore cannot be the theme of a fine art. Thus in architecture also they are of secondary origin, and have a subordinate significance, which I shall bring out immediately. If it were the task of architecture as a fine art simply to exhibit these, then the model would have the same effect as the finished work. But this is distinctly not the case; on the contrary, the works of architecture, in order to act aesthetically, absolutely must have a considerable size; nay, they can never be too large, but may easily be too small. Indeed ceteris paribus the æsthetic effect is in exact proportion to the size of the building, because