THE BIOLOGICAL
FALLACY
177
the early Renaissance a
typical intention,
a desire
to please, quite different
from Bramante's
monu-
mental intention—^his desire
to ennoble. The im-
maturity ofa child is
spent in
'
endlessimitation
'
of the maturer world, expressed with
unskilled
thoughts and undeveloped
powers. But the
'
im-
maturity
'
of the Renaissance was rich
with the
accumulated skill of
the mediaeval crafts: it was
in some
directions—in decorative sculpture, for
example
—
^almosttooaccomplished. And
itwasnot
spentinfeeblyimitating
themature,fortheobvious
reason thatthe
'
mature
'
didnot yetexist. True,
the antiqueexisted
;
but the Brunelleschian
archi-
tecture
was far from
merely imitating the classic
architectureof Rome. It had a scale offorms,
a
canonofproportionsandanideal
ofdecorationthat
were all its own.
The conception of immaturity,
therefore, while it is appropriate in one or two
respects, is in others misleading
; and the parallel
isso
forcedthatitwerebestrelinquished.
Thefirstconditionofaestheticunderstandingisto
place
ourselvesatthe
point
of
vision
appropriateto
theworkofart: tojudgeitinitsownterms. But
its own
terms will
probably not be identical
with
those of thesequence as a whole. If weinsist on
regarding the sequence, we are forced to compare
Brunelleschi with Bramante, and this
can
only be
doneinsofarastheirstylesarecommensurable—^in
M
