It follows from Schopenhauer's treatment of architecture that he held Greek work of the best period to be the highest type of building which it is possible to attain. In its best examples that style is perfect and complete, and is not susceptible of any important improvement. The modern architect, he held, cannot depart, to any great extent, from the rules and models of the Greeks, without descending the path of deterioration. There remains nothing for him to do but to apply the art transmitted to him, and to carry out the rules laid down, so far as he is able under the limitations of climate, age, and country.
Schopenhauer, therefore, had no appreciation of Gothic architecture. The simple rationality of the Greek temple delights him, but the Gothic cathedral leaves him cold and unmoved. He makes the naïve admission, that approval of Gothic architecture would upset all his theories of the æsthetic significance of architecture. To compare the two is, he says, a barbarous presumption, although he allows, somewhat grudgingly, that a certain beauty of its own cannot be denied to the Gothic style. Our pleasure in it, however, is to be traced mainly to the association of ideas, and to historical memories. That pure rationality by which every part admits instantly of strict account in its subordination to the plan as a whole, is not to be found in Gothic work. Greek architecture is conceived in a { 71} purely objective spirit, whereas Gothic is rather subjective in spirit. But Schopenhauer cannot reason away entirely the impression created by the Gothic interior. That, he admits, is the finest part of the whole, and it is here that the mind is impressed by the effect of the groined vaulting, borne by slender, aspiring pillars, soaring upwards. All burden seems to have disappeared, promising eternal security. Most of the faults, however, appear upon the exterior, whereas in Greek buildings the exterior is the finer; in the interior the flat roof retains something depressing and prosaic.
Of the ideals and aspirations which the great builders of the Middle Ages so wonderfully transmuted into stone, Schopenhauer has nothing to tell us. The men "who sang their souls in stone" were for him pre-eminently the builders of Greek temples.