out by the labor of others; in this sense I have already defined the best archi
tecture to be the expression of the mind of manhood by the hands of child
hood. But on a smaller scale, and in a design which cannot be mathematically
defined, one man's thoughts can never be expressed by another: and the dif
ference between the spirit of touch of the man who is inventing, and of the
man who is obeying directions, is often all the difference between a great and
a common work of art. How wide the separation is between original and sec
ondhand execution, I shall endeavor to show elsewhere; it is not so much to
our purpose here as to mark the other and more fatal error of despising manual
labor when governed by intellect; for it is no less fatal an error to despise it
when thus regulated by intellect, than to value it for its own sake. We are
always in these days endeavoring to separate the two; we want one man to be
always thinking, and another to be always working, and we call one a gentle
man, and the other an operative; whereas the workman ought often to be
thinking, and the thinker often to be working, and both should be gentlemen,
in the best sense. As it is, we make both ungentle, the one envying, the other
despising, his brother; and the mass of society is made up of morbid thinkers,
and miserable workers. Now it is only by labor that thought can be made
healthy, and only by thought that labor can be made happy, and the two cannot
.
THE STONES OF VENICE / 1333
be separated with impunity. It would be well if all of us were good handi
craftsmen in some kind, and the dishonor of manual labor done away with
altogether; so that though there should still be a trenchant distinction of race
between nobles and commoners, there should not, among the latter, be a
trenchant distinction of employment, as between idle and working men, or
between men of liberal and illiberal professions. All professions should be
liberal, and there should be less pride felt in peculiarity of employment, and
more in excellence of achievement. And yet more, in each several8 profession,
no master should be too proud to do its hardest work. The painter should grind
his own colours; the architect work in the mason's yard with his men; the
master manufacturer be himself a more skillful operative than any man in his
mills; and the distinction between one man and another be only in experience
and skill, and the authority and wealth which these must naturally and justly obtain.
I should be led far from the matter in hand, if I were to pursue this interesting subject. Enough, I trust, has been said to show the reader that the rudeness or imperfection which at first rendered the term 'Gothic' one of reproach is indeed, when rightly understood, one of the most noble characters of Christian architecture, and not only a noble but an essential one. It seems a fantastic paradox, but it is nevertheless a most important truth, that no architecture can be truly noble which is not imperfect. And this is easily demonstrable. For since the architect, whom we will suppose capable of doing all in perfection, cannot execute the whole with his own hands, he must either make slaves of his workmen in the old Greek, and present English fashion, and level his work to a slave's capacities, which is to degrade it; or else he must take his workmen as he finds them, and let them show their weaknesses together with their strength, which will involve the Gothic imperfection, but render the whole work as noble as the the intellect of the age can make it. But the principle may be stated more broadly still. I have confined the illus
tration of it to architecture, but I must not leave it as if true of architecture
only. Hitherto I have used the words imperfect and perfect merely to distin
guish between work grossly unskillful, and work executed with average pre
cision and science; and I have been pleading that any degree of unskillfulness
should be admitted, so only that the laborer's mind had room for expression.
But, accurately speaking, no good work whatever can be perfect, and the
demand for -perfection is always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art.
This for two reasons, both based on everlasting laws. The first, that no great
man ever stops working till he has reached his point of failure; that is to say,
