fatuous phrase—they builded better than they knew—when, in fact, 'they' knew exactly what they were about, and possessed a consummate technique to express precisely what they chose?
There is nothing more certain than that the Gothic cathedrals of Europe were built by architects who knew their business and whose plans were definite and precise. The architects' drawings for some of these cathedrals are extant and even the builders' model for one of them. It was intended that the towers of Notre Dame, for example, should be crowned with spires like those of the cathedral of Lichfield, for instance. But circumstances of various sorts worked to prevent the completion of the spires on most of the great cathedrals, and they were left as towers, as at Notre Dame and on the front of York. Our own standard of beauty has been fixed by what we actually have seen, and if Notre Dame were now to receive lofty spires as a crown to its towers, most of us would find its beauty marred. Are we then to conclude that we, and not the architects of old time, are the possessors of the truest standards? Shall we say that we comprehend the beauty of a Gothic cathedral better than the builder who designed it?
It would be easy to extend comparisons from the material objects of art to the immaterial institutions of society, to contrast our notions of justice and of government with those of the ancients, for example. We are just as sure that all our social institutions are better than those of old time as we are that the towers of Notre Dame are more beautiful in their present unfinished state. But should we not pause before unthinkingly accepting either conclusion?
There is no member of a ladies' culture club in the northwest who is not ready to declare that the very essence of classic purity is to be found in the unpainted Parthenon or in an uncolored Venus, and equally sure that the constitution of the state of South Dakota contains the quintessence of political wisdom. History throws a doubt on the first conclusion and suggests that it may not be amiss to reexamine the last from time to time. 'Progress' is something more than the difference between the state of affairs on a Tuesday, compared with that of any preceding Monday. The measure of progress is not the discrepancy between the inventories—moral or material—of one epoch and of a later one. There is no space here to attempt to say what a true measure of progress might be, but it should not have been quite useless to suggest that the measure in question is not so simple as we commonly assume; that the differences between races and epochs show retrogressions in many fields as well as progressions in many others. The lesson is simple—so simple that it may even be resented. Yet it is so difficult that there is no day that passes without a proof that it is not yet learned.
