n completed, as his own
figure sculpture. The Assyrian and Egyptian, on the contrary, less
cognizant of accurate form in anything, were content to allow their
figure sculpture to be executed by inferior workmen, but lowered the
method of its treatment to a standard which every workman could reach,
and then trained him by discipline so rigid, that there was no chance
of his falling beneath the standard appointed. The Greek gave to the
lower workman no subject which he could not perfectly execute. The
Assyrian gave him subjects which he could only execute imperfectly, but
fixed a legal standard for his imperfection. The workman was, in both
systems, a slave.[157]

But in the mediaeval, or especially Christian, system of ornament, this
slavery is done away with altogether; Christianity having recognized,
in small things as well as great, the individual value of every soul.
But it not only recognizes its value; it confesses its imperfection, in
only bestowing dignity upon the acknowledgment of unworthiness. That
admission of lost power and fallen nature, which the Greek or Ninevite
felt to be intensely painful, and, as far as might be, altogether
refused, the Christian makes daily and hourly contemplating the fact of
it without fear, as tending, in the end, to God's greater glory.
Therefore, to every spirit which Christianity summons to her service,
her exhortation is: Do what you can, and confess frankly what you are
unable to do; neither let your effort be shortened for fear of failure,
nor your confession silenced for fear of shame. And it is, perhaps, the
principal admirableness of the Gothic schools of architecture, that
they thus receive the results of the labour of inferior minds; and out
of fragments full of imperfection, and betraying that imperfection in
every touch, indulgently raise up a stately and unaccusable whole.

But the modern English mind has this much in common with that of the
Greek, that it intensely desires, in all things, the utmost completion
or perfection compatible with their nature. This is a noble character
in the abstract, but becomes ignoble when it causes us to forget the
relative dignities of that nature itself, and to prefer the perfectness
of the lower nature to the imperfection of the higher; not considering
that as, judged by such a rule, all the brute animals would be
preferable to man, because more perfect in their functions and kind,
and yet are always held inferior to him, so also