In the robust days of the mediaeval schoolnien, when the newly awakened passion for learning swept students to the University centers by tens of thousands, a sturdy custom maintained which was known as the defense of the thesis. In accordance with this tradition-such was the democracy of those republics of letters-any student, whether native or foreign, to a university, whether known or uncouth, might challenge any of its doctors to debate. In coming before you to advocate a somewhat drastic reform in the present status of architecture I feel something of the embarrassment that those scholastic novitiates of long ago must have felt when they found themselves, with timid theses, face to face with specialists of authority and repute.As you well know, it is the practice of the English gentry in laying out the grounds of a country estate so to arrange the approaches to the manor that the visitor will receive his first impression from the most favorable point of view. For like reasons I choose to approach my thesis somewhat circuitously, even though the path advance through the shady groves of philosophy.Despite the later teachings of Ruskin, and the expressive testimony of the whole arts-and-crafts movement, the academic distinction between the fine and the useful arts, inherited by the Renaissance from the Greek philosophy, is still accepted as orthodox by the majority of students. According to this venerable dictum, the fine arts are those which are of solely intrinsic value-giving that pure pleasure which comes from the perception of beauty-which serve no ulterior end, which are not blemished by any taint of subserviency to practical life; whereas
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