2. PARTICULAR ARCHITECTURAL MODES OF CONFORMATION
If we pass now to a consideration of the particular forms in which romantic architecture receives its specific character we shall find, as we have already above noticed, that our entire discussion will be confined to what is genuine Gothic architecture, and mainly that of the church buildings of Christendom, in their contrast to the Greek temple.
(_a_) As fundamental form underlying all the rest, we have here the _wholly shut off dwelling-house._
(_α_) In other words, just as the Christian spirit withdraws itself within an ideal realm, the building is the place essentially delimited on all sides for the congregation of the Christian community and the gathering together of spiritual life. It is the concentration of essential soul-life which thus encloses itself in spatial relations. The devotion of the Christian heart, however, is at the same time and in the same degree an exaltation over finitude, so that this exaltation, moreover, determines the character of God's house. Architecture secures thereby as its significance, independently of the object which renders it necessary as a building, this exaltation to the Infinite, a significance which it is forced to express through the spatial relations of architectural forms. The impression, therefore, which art is now called upon to emphasize is, in one aspect of it, and in contrast to the open gaiety of the Greek temple, that of the tranquillity of the soul which, released from external nature and worldly conditions, retires wholly into self-seclusion; in the other aspect of it it is that impress of a solemn sublimity, which strains and soars over and beyond all rational limits. If, therefore, the buildings of classical architecture as a rule offer the expansion of breadth, we find in contrast to this that the romantic character of Christian churches asserts itself in the growth upwards from the soil and a soaring to the skies.
(_β_) In this oblivion of external Nature and all the diverting occupations and interests of finite existence, which is to be effected by means of such seclusion, the open forecourts and colonnades and the like, which are in direct communication with that world, furthermore and of necessity fall away, or only receive an entirely modified representation within the interior of the building. And in like manner the light of the sun is either excluded, or glimmers in broken rays through windows of painted glass, which, to prevent total immersion in darkness, are perforce admitted. What humanity needs here is not the gift of external Nature, but a world created through it and for it alone, for its devotion and the activity of its soul-life.