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International Perspectives on Aging 20
Series Editors: Jason L. Powell, Sheying Chen

Tian-kui Jing
Stein Kuhnle
Yi Pan
Sheying Chen Editors

Aging
Welfare and
Social Policy
China and the Nordic Countries in
Comparative Perspective
International Perspectives on Aging

Volume 20

Series Editor:

Jason L. Powell
Department of Social and Political Science, University of Chester, Chester, UK

Sheying Chen
Department of Public Administration, Pace University, New York, NY, USA
The study of aging is continuing to increase rapidly across multiple disciplines. This
wide-ranging series on International Perspectives on Aging provides readers with
much-needed comprehensive texts and critical perspectives on the latest research,
policy, and practical developments. Both aging and globalization have become a
reality of our times, yet a systematic effort of a global magnitude to address aging
is yet to be seen. The series bridges the gaps in the literature and provides cutting-­
edge debate on new and traditional areas of comparative aging, all from an
international perspective. More specifically, this book series on International
Perspectives on Aging puts the spotlight on international and comparative studies of
aging.

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/8818

Tian-kui Jing • Stein Kuhnle • Yi Pan
Sheying Chen
Editors

Aging Welfare and Social

Policy
China and the Nordic Countries
in Comparative Perspective
Editors
Tian-kui Jing Stein Kuhnle
Institute of Sociology of Chinese Academy Department of Comparative Politics
of Social Sciences University of Bergen
Beijing, China Bergen, Norway

Yi Pan Sheying Chen

Institute of Sociology Public Administration/Social Policy
Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Pace University
Beijing, China New York, NY, USA
Center for Social Work Study
Tsinghua University
Beijing, China

ISSN 2197-5841     ISSN 2197-585X (electronic)

International Perspectives on Aging
ISBN 978-3-030-10894-6    ISBN 978-3-030-10895-3 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-10895-3

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019934959

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

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Preface

The recognition, mutual learning, and comparative study of social welfare between
China and Nordic countries, as well as their welfare development experiences,
provide an excellent point of view that can open up a broad scope of thinking with
great value in both research and academic fields.
First of all, both China and Nordic countries have created an extremely valuable
welfare construction experience. The Nordic welfare model enjoys a widespread
global reputation. It is not only universal but also economically sustainable. These
“double-strength” features have withstood a series of tests ranging from the oil cri-
sis of the 1970s to the financial crisis beginning with the twenty-first century. The
Nordic model basically provides both political and social stability with a high
national happiness index. In particular, its scientifically designed welfare system
and its reliable operational mechanism are worthy of in-depth discussions academi-
cally. China’s welfare practice has gone through a complicated and arduous explo-
ration process. However, with detours and learning experiences, it has also made
remarkable achievements. Especially in the 40 years of reform and opening up,
China has established a comprehensive and complete welfare system covering 1.3
billion people. The Chinese system is not only the largest in terms of scale but also
the greatest in terms of generality. That is to say, in just a few decades, 800 million
Chinese people have come out of poverty. China’s contribution to global poverty
reduction has exceeded 70%; that is, China is also the country with the largest pov-
erty population reduction in the world. In addition, it is the first in the world to fulfill
the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. By 2020, China will histori-
cally eliminate absolute poverty, which will be a great moment in the history of the
Chinese nation. This rich experience of the Chinese system is also self-evident.
Second, the enormous differences between China and Nordic countries highlight
the distinctive characteristics of each welfare system and provide a unique
environment for comparative research. With the high levels of income in Nordic
countries and the relatively low per capita income in China, in terms of the welfare
system design, for example, the payment system, should reflect this difference.
Each Nordic country is a nation-state; although China has 56 ethnic groups, there
are also obvious differences in the unity and diversity of the system. The Nordic

v
vi Preface

countries do not have much difference between urban and rural living situations and
their regional disparities are also more balanced, whereas China has long
implemented a dual urban–rural system. Despite efforts to narrow the gap between
urban and rural areas in recent years, more time is clearly required to resolve this
problem. The regional disparities are caused by a much longer historical process.
All these factors have particularly emphasized the tremendous conflicts between
universalism and specialization in the welfare system. In comparison, these
differences between China and Nordic countries have enabled us to have a much
clearer, richer, and deeper understanding of the nature of welfare and its realization.
Third, and last, the common pursuit for the values of social welfare by both China
and Nordic countries makes it possible for them to reach consensus and consistent
conclusions. The Nordic countries have placed social welfare at the forefront with a
strong sense of government responsibility and a high degree of identification with citi-
zen recognition, forming a matured welfare culture tradition. In contrast, in China a
“Fu” (fortune) culture has existed since ancient times. As early as in the Xia, Yin, and
Zhou Dynasties, old-age benefits were already established. “Governing the Country
by Filial Piety” was further developed in the Han Dynasty. The central government of
the Han Dynasty established an “emperor stick” system for seniors. Since then, for
thousands of years, Chinese people have always maintained the tradition of family
support and mutual support for the elderly. Nowadays, taking the people’s well-being
as the ultimate goal of governance, the Communist Party of China and the Chinese
government have endeavored to improve and implement various welfare systems,
including social services for the elderly. It can be said that although China and Nordic
countries have different national and social environments, as well as public senti-
ments, their goal of pursuing the happiness of the people is the same. The government
and the society share a high degree of consensus. Therefore, mutual learning and
mutual recognition are not only necessary but also conscious actions by both parties.
Based on these foregoing considerations, the Sino-Nordic Welfare Laboratory in
the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), under the support and sponsoring
of the Institute of Sociology of CASS and Sino-Nordic Welfare Research Network
(SNoW), has held the first session of a Sino-Nordic welfare forum with the title of
“Ageing Welfare & Social Policy.” This international seminar brought together
scholars from China, Nordic countries, the United States, Australia, and other Asian
countries from related academic and research areas, and they had a full exchange
and discussion on the welfare system, social policy, and especially welfare for aging
people between Sino and Nordic countries. This book, a revision and update of the
conference papers, is divided into two parts. The first part is a general study of the
welfare system of the Nordic welfare states and China. In his article “Welfare States
with Nordic Characteristics,” Stein Kuhnle wrote that the characteristics of the
Nordic welfare states are precisely as follows: emphasize the public awareness of
citizen welfare, the principle of universal population coverage, adherence to social
equality, and the normative basis of specific formal and informal mechanisms for
formulating social policies and achieving political agreement. In Dr. Yi Pan’s paper,
“Building a Welfare System with Chinese Characteristics,” she comprehensively
and systematically analyzed the three transition stages of China’s welfare develop-
Preface vii

ment process and pointed out that the development of China’s social welfare system
is moving toward moderate universalism: First, moderate universalism is designed
to meet all people’s basic needs, reflecting relative fairness and equality, rather than
pursuit of the ultimate average results; second, moderate universalism recognizes
that people have different abilities and provides all individuals with fair develop-
ment opportunities and equal benefits; and third, moderate universalism means that
standards and costs are not high, and the development is sustainable. In Mr.
Chunguang Wang’s article “Evolution and Construction of China’s Social Protection
System: A Discussion from the Perspective of Shared Development,” the main social
policies that constitute China’s social protection system are thoroughly dissected
from the three levels of legal validity, degree of protection, and sustainability. He
also compared the Chinese social protection system with the Japanese and Korean
social protection systems, pointing out that although China has built a fairly com-
plete social protection system, there are still problems such as inadequate coordina-
tion, weak protection capabilities, a low level of protection, and poor sustainability.
The second part is the main body of the book. In this part, numerous articles
discussed many aspects of elderly welfare from different perspectives. Among
these, the article by Sheying Chen and Jason L. Powell, “Aging in Community:
Historical and Comparative Study of Aging Welfare and Social Policy,” makes an
historical comparative study of aging, family, community, and social policy from
several aspects of aging welfare. It reveals the theme of the book with a comprehensive
understanding. Dr. Pan’s article, “Optimizing and Integrating Urban and Rural
Resources and Improving the Comprehensive Community Aged Services System—
Study on the Comprehensive Aged Care Service System in Shanghai, Gansu, and
Yunnan,” offers actual cases and a practical base for understanding the subject of the
book. Other articles introduced and discussed the elderly welfare and care services
in Norway (Rune Ervik), Sweden (Sven E.O. Hort), Finland (e.g., Minna Zechner
and Teppo Kröger), China (e.g., Haijun Cheng, Jitong Liu, Bingqin Li, Lijie Fang,
Jing Wang, and Bo Hu). All the authors are well-known experts in the field. Every
paper in this book is informative, analytical, and instructive.
I am grateful to the scholars from both Nordic countries and China for writing
and publishing this book. These authors contributed their long-term valuable
research results to this book. Dr. Yi Pan, a fellow researcher of the Chinese Academy
of Social Sciences, has studied in Nordic countries and the United Kingdom with a
doctoral degree in social policy. Professor Sheying Chen of China’s Tsinghua
University and also Pace University in the United States has long been engaged in
cross-national comparative studies on social welfare and social policies. They are
all outstanding experts in this field, and have devoted themselves to the writing and
publishing of this book. My special thanks also go to Springer International
Publishing Company for their support for the comparative study of social welfare in
China and Nordic countries!
I sincerely welcome your comments and suggestions in the hope that this book
will further promote the study of social welfare in the world.

Beijing, China Tian-kui Jing

Contents

Part I Welfare State and Social Policy

1 Welfare States with Nordic Characteristics������������������������������������������    3
Stein Kuhnle
2 Building a Welfare System with Chinese Characteristics:
From a Residual Type to Moderate Universalism��������������������������������   15
Yi Pan
3 Evolution and Construction of China’s Social Protection
System: A Discussion from the Perspective of Shared
Development ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   31
Chunguang Wang

Part II Aging Welfare and Social Policy

4 “Aging in Community”: Historical and Comparative Study
of Aging Welfare and Social Policy��������������������������������������������������������   55
Sheying Chen and Jason L. Powell

Part III Nordic Countries

5 Sweden: Aging Welfare and Social Policy in the Twenty-First
Century ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   73
Sven E. O. Hort
6 Looking for the Easy Way Out: Demographic Panic
and the Twists and Turns of Long-Term Care Policy in Finland��������   91
Teppo Kröger
7 Policy Responses to Aging: Care Services for the Elderly
in Norway�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 105
Rune Ervik

ix
x Contents

8 Is Finland Connected for e-Health and e-Welfare?������������������������������ 125

Minna Zechner

Part IV China
9 Social Construction, System Defects, and System Quality
of a Welfare Policy and Regulation Framework for the Elderly
of China���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 141
Jitong Liu and Yu Liu
10 Social Organisations and Old Age Services in Urban
Communities in China: Stabilising Networks? ������������������������������������ 169
Bingqin Li, Lijie Fang, Jing Wang, and Bo Hu
11 Community Based Social Services for the Elderly
in Urban-Rural China: Investigations in Three Provinces������������������ 211
Yi Pan
12 Appendix: China’s Elderly Care Policy and Its Future Trends���������� 233
Haijun Cheng

Index������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 239
Contributors

Haijun Cheng Training Center of Ministry of Civil Affairs, Beijing Social

Administration Vocational College, East Beijing, China
Sheying Chen Public Administration/Social Policy, Pace University, New York,
NY, USA
Center for Social Work Study, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
Rune Ervik NORCE Norwegian Research Centre, Department for Social Sciences,
Bergen, Norway
Lijie Fang Social Policy Research Centre, Institute of Sociology Chinese Academy
of Social Sciences, Beijing, China
Sven E. O. Hort Linnaeus University, Kalmar and Växjö, Sweden
Bo Hu London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK
Tian-kui Jing Institute of Sociology of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences,
Beijing, China
Teppo Kröger Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy, University of
Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland
Stein Kuhnle Department of Comparative Politics, University of Bergen, Bergen,
Norway
Bingqin Li Social Policy Research Centre, UNSW, Sydney, Australia
Jitong Liu Department of Health Policy and Management, School of Public
Health, Peking University, Haidian District, Beijing, P.R.China
Yu Liu Department of Health Policy and Management, School of Public Health,
Peking University, Haidian District, Beijing, P.R.China
Yi Pan Institute of Sociology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, China

xi
xii Contributors

Jason L. Powell Department of Social and Political Science, The University of

Chester, Chester, UK
Chunguang Wang Institute of Sociology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences,
Beijing, China
Jing Wang Social Policy Research Centre, Institute of Sociology Chinese Academy
of Social Sciences, Beijing, China
Minna Zechner University of Lapland, Rovaniemi, Finland
 Part I
Welfare State and Social Policy
Chapter 1
Welfare States with Nordic Characteristics

Stein Kuhnle

1.1 Introduction: Varieties of Welfare States

Welfare states come in different sizes, forms and shapes, thus it is not possible to
speak about the welfare state. It is commonly agreed upon that the origins of the
Western welfare state date back to the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and
are closely associated with major social, economic and political transformations at
the time (Castles, Leibfried, Lewis, Obinger, & Pierson, 2010). Great societal trans-
formations of industrialization, rise of capitalism, urbanization and population
growth paved way for a new role of the state as to welfare responsibility for its citi-
zens. Traditional forms of welfare provision offered by families, guilds, voluntary
organizations and charities, churches and local communities came to be seen by
many people in authoritative positions as insufficient welfare providers. The last
two decades of the nineteenth century mark the “take-off of the modern welfare
state” (Flora & Alber, 1981), and inaugurated the emergence and growth of social
insurance-­like policies. The great societal transformations were conducive to a
“new thinking” about the social role of the state: Should the state take a more active
social role, and if so, in what way? On entering the twentieth century, social policy
and welfare emerged to become a crucial issue on the political agenda, first and
foremost in Western countries, whether democratic or authoritarian, and already
from the beginning significant variations among Western nations could be observed.
The foundations for a divide between a social insurance model premised on an
application of relatively pure insurance principles (continental Europe) and a social
citizenship model premised on universal tax-based provision (Scandinavia, Britain,

The paper was originally presented at the International Seminar on Ageing Welfare and Social
Policy, 20–21 June 2015, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing.
S. Kuhnle (*)
Department of Comparative Politics, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway
e-mail: stein.kuhnle@uib.no

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 3

T.-k. Jing et al. (eds.), Aging Welfare and Social Policy, International
Perspectives on Aging 20, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-10895-3_1
4 S. Kuhnle

Canada, New Zealand) were, although not necessarily intentionally, established in

this early period (Kuhnle & Sander, 2010).
Over time, over the last 100 and so years, welfare states have developed along
different paths, and ideas and institutions have spread globally, across different sys-
tems of governance, different political-economic systems, different cultures with
varying traditions of relations and mutual expectations between citizens and the
state. Welfare states vary in scope and format, and in political orientations and dis-
tributional outcomes (Arts & Gelissen, 2010). Although every state, and every wel-
fare state, from one perspective can be considered unique, it makes sense as many
scholars, myself included, have done, particularly over the last 25 years, to identify
patterns which makes it meaningful to group countries into different “worlds”,
“regimes”, “types” or “models” of welfare states. Consequently, also with such con-
ceptualizations, the aim is to try explain why different kinds of welfare states have
developed and explain implications of different kinds of welfare state constructions
for distributional outcomes, political cleavage structures, and generally for their
social, economic and political effects. Esping-Andersen (1990) built upon earlier
attempts (Titmuss, 1974; Wilensky & Lebeaux, 1958) at classifications of welfare
states when he published Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. His much-quoted
book has had a defining influence upon the field of comparative welfare state
research since its publication. Esping-Andersen distinguished between the “liberal”
welfare regime (e.g. USA); the “corporatist-statist” or “conservative” regime (e.g.
Germany) and the “social democratic” welfare regime (e.g. Sweden).
In the following, I shall briefly sum up my perspective as to what I consider to be
major elements of one such type of welfare state or regime, namely the kind of
welfare state which has become known as “the Nordic welfare model”.1 What are
the characteristics of this “model”? And can we, as a parallel to the expression
“Socialism with Chinese characteristics”, speak of “Welfare states with Nordic
characteristics”?

1.2 Major Elements of the Nordic Type of Welfare State2

The notion of a Nordic welfare model predates Esping-Andersen’s typology from

1990, although the concept of a “model” was not often used (but see Erikson,
Hansen, Ringen, & Uusitalo, 1987). The origin of such a concept and a specific
Nordic experience can be traced to the period between the two world wars in the
twentieth century, to the 1930s, when an outside perspective on Scandinavia led
the American journalist Marquis Childs to coin the term “middle way” to describe

1
The label can vary. Sometimes the Nordic experience of welfare state development is referred to
as “the Scandinavian welfare model” or “the social-democratic welfare model”, or it is referred to
as nation-specific models, e.g. “the Danish-”, “the Norwegian-” or “the Swedish model”. My first
publication on “the Scandinavian model” was published (in Norwegian) in 1990 (Kuhnle, 1990).
2
Parts of the text in this section build on Alestalo, Hort, and Kuhnle (2009).
1 Welfare States with Nordic Characteristics 5

the Swedish development (Childs, 1936). The “middle way” was one between high
degree of unregulated capitalism on the one side and authoritarian/totalitarian sys-
tems and ideologies on the other (Nazism in Germany; Communism under Stalin in
the Soviet Union). The decade before the outbreak of World War II in Europe is
marked by the social democratic parties ascending to political power in the Nordic
countries, most particularly in the three Scandinavian countries, Denmark, Norway
and Sweden. In the same decade, major agreements between the trade union move-
ments and employers’ associations were made (except in Denmark, where such an
agreement was made already in 1899, as the first country in the world), to define
rules for the process of negotiating work conditions and wages, and the embryonic
development towards the post-war regular contact and cooperation channels
between the organizations in the labour market and governments was initiated. This
was, and has become, a kind of neo-corporatist system of governance complement-
ing the system of governance manifested through general elections of representa-
tives of various political parties to parliaments, and governments being formed on
the basis of parliamentary majorities of general or case-by-case support (in the latter
instance if only minority governments can be formed).
The notion of a distinctive Nordic type of welfare state has (had) normative con-
notations, most often of a positive nature, as an example of a model to follow
towards a “good society”, understood as generally high level of well-being, little
poverty, and egalitarian income distributions, but sometimes also of a negative
nature, as something to be avoided, given presumed undesirable economic effects of
too much emphasis on public responsibility and equality. The recognized British
liberal-conservative weekly magazine The Economist has over a short period of
time displayed an ambiguous attitude: in its special annual issue at the end of 2006,
it spelled out the scenario or “forecast” for political developments in different parts
of the world for the following year. It was said that: “It is widely thought that the
Nordic countries have found some magic way of combining high taxes and lavish
welfare systems with fast growth and low unemployment…Yet, the belief in a spe-
cial Nordic model, or “third way”, will crumble further in 2007” (The Economist,
December 2006). But, in its regular weekly issue of 2 February 2013, after the most
critical years of the financial crisis, a recession and austerity policies in Europe, it
presented a cover page and devoted a special section to “The next supermodel: Why
the world should look at the Nordic countries” (The Economist, 2 February 2013).
So, which perspective is most convincing: that the Nordic model is fading away, or
that it is becoming a “supermodel”? Or is the future somewhere between “no model”
and “supermodel”?
There exist many different conceptions of “the Nordic welfare model”, and some
may even claim that “there is no such thing as a Nordic model” (Ringen, 1991),
meaning that welfare states do not come as types or models, and that the experience
and institutions of each state are unique. Although the conception of models, and a
Nordic welfare model being one, is a construction, a simplification of reality, I find
it analytically useful to distinguish between “types” or “models” of welfare and
relating to various welfare states as proximate empirical examples.
6 S. Kuhnle

Since the 1980s, based on results from a number of comparative studies of welfare
states, the concept of a “Nordic” or “Scandinavian model” or “welfare regime type”
has successfully entered our vocabulary, whether that of international organizations,
that of scholars and that of mass media covering the Nordic countries. As men-
tioned, for the most part the concept has a positive connotation, but not always, this
being dependent upon context, time period and the ideological eyes of the observer.
To put it crudely, neo-liberals and old Western marxists seem to share a sceptical
view, while social democrats and moderate conservatives and liberals more gladly
than most bring out a strongly positive view. In fact, many Nordic social democrats
will claim that it is their model, but in a historical perspective that is much too sim-
plistic.3 Within the Nordic countries the notion is generally positively laden to the
extent that political parties have competed for the “ownership” of the kind of politi-
cal system and welfare state that the concept is seen to denote. The concept is broad,
vague and ambiguous, but it is a helpful reference for observers of varieties of
market-oriented welfare democracies (cf. Leibfried & Mau, 2008). But we can also
observe that European welfare states seem to be on a track of mutual learning, in
particular in the areas of family and labour market policies (Borrås & Jacobsson,
2004), implying that European welfare state models are becoming more intermixed
and less distinct (Cox, 2004; cf. also Abrahamson, 2002).
I use the concepts of “Scandinavian” and “Nordic welfare states”, or
“Scandinavian” and “Nordic welfare model” interchangeably. All of these concepts
are used in the literature. In geographic terms, the “Scandinavian” reference would
include the mountainous peninsula of Norway and Sweden, plus Denmark, while
“Nordic” includes Finland and Iceland as well. For historical, institutional, cultural
and political reasons, since Nordic regional political, institutionalized cooperation
have developed since the 1950s, e.g. creation of a passport union, a free Nordic
labour market and a “social union”, I think the concepts “Scandinavian” and
“Nordic” can be used interchangeably (cf. also Hilson, 2008). In terms of “welfare
states” or “welfare models” the five countries, with some exceptions for Iceland,
also share a number of characteristics. If we accept the notion of a Nordic welfare
model, the analytical findings of a very comprehensive literature can be summa-
rized in three master statements, the Nordic welfare state is about: Stateness;
Universality; and Equality. In addition, I think a further element, which goes
beyond pure characteristics of the welfare system, must be included in order to
understand how the evolution of “the politics of welfare”—how formal and infor-
mal systems of governance—has impacted the welfare state and continuous reform
efforts and decisions.

3
The Swedish Social Democratic Party has, much to the surprise of many Nordic scholars in the
field, in fact in 2014 got “The Nordic Model” accepted as their trademark by the Swedish agency
for patent and trademark registration (“Patent- och registreringsverket”). The Nordic Council of
Ministers has, correctly in my opinion, protested such an attempt at political monopolization of the
concept.
1 Welfare States with Nordic Characteristics 7

1.3 Stateness

The Nordic welfare model is first of all based on an extensive prevalence of the state
and the public sector in the welfare arrangements. The stateness of the Scandinavian
countries has long historical roots and the relationship between the state and the
people can be considered as a close and positive one. The implication is not that the
state sends “… rain and sunshine from above” (Marx, 1852/1979, pp. 187–188), but
rather that the twentieth century state has not been perceived as a coercive apparatus
of oppression in the hands of the ruling classes. It rather has, for most of the time,
developed as a peaceful battleground of different classes assuming an important
function “as an agency through which society can be reformed” (Korpi, 1978,
p. 48). The stateness implies weaker influence of intermediary structures (church,
voluntary organizations, etc.), but it includes “relatively strong elements of social
citizenship and relatively uniform and integrated institutions” (ibid.).The class com-
promise [of the 1930s] was an important element in the making of the Scandinavian
type of welfare state (Flora, 1986, pp. xvii–xx). The role of the state is seen in exten-
sive public services and public employment and in many taxation-based cash ben-
efit schemes. It should be remembered, however, that social services are mostly
organized at the local level by numerous small municipalities that makes the inter-
action between the decision makers and the people rather intimate and intensive.
“The difference between public and private, so crucial in many debates in the
Anglo-American countries, was of minor importance in the Scandinavian coun-
tries” (Allardt, 1986, p. 111). For example, until recently it has been considered
legitimate for the state to collect and publish tax records of individual citizens. It is
probably no accident that Sweden and Finland have the oldest population statistics
in the world.

1.4 Universalism

In the Nordic countries, the principle of universal social rights is extended to the
whole population. Services and cash benefits are to a lesser extent than elsewhere
targeted towards the have-nots as they are universal in character and also cover the
middle- and high-income classes. In short: “All benefit: all are dependent; and all
will presumably feel obliged to pay” (Esping-Andersen, 1990, pp. 27–28). The uni-
versalistic character of the Nordic welfare state has been traced to “both idealistic
and pragmatic ideas promoted and partly implemented” in the making of the early
social legislation in the years before and after the turn of the twentieth century.
Social security programmes were initiated at the time of the political and economic
modernization of the Scandinavian countries and the idea of universalism was at
least a latent element of the “nation-building” project. And, secondly, the similar
life chances of poor farmers and poor workers contributed to the recognition of
similar risks and social rights: Every citizen is potentially exposed to certain risks.
8 S. Kuhnle

Thirdly, especially after the Second World War, there has been a strong tendency to
avoid the exclusion of people with poor means in Scandinavia. And finally, there has
been a very pragmatic tendency to minimize the administrative costs by favouring
universal schemes instead of extensive bureaucratic means-testing (Kildal &
Kuhnle, 2005; Kuhnle & Hort, 2004, pp. 9–12). As of the early 1970s all Nordic
countries had established universal coverage of old age pensions systems, sickness
insurance, medical care, occupational injury insurance, child allowances and paren-
tal leave schemes. The unemployment insurance was (and is) in principle universal
and compulsory in Norway only, while merely trade union members were covered
in the other countries, but all unemployed are entitled to cash benefits within some
programme. The same overall institutional pattern has persisted until this day, but
continuous reform activity has generally, although with variations among the Nordic
countries, led to various modifications in e.g. pension programmes (with a strength-
ening of the insurance principle) and unemployment insurance, and to more co-­
payment in the health sector. Current developments indicate a move towards a more
mixed welfare system, where the role of private pension and health insurance will
increase, but more as supplement to public welfare and without jeopardizing the
basic idea of universalism.

1.5 Equality

The historical inheritance of the Nordic countries is that of fairly small class,
income, and gender differences, although the full implementation of gender equal-
ity policies, with concomitant norms and popular expectations, came relatively late,
in the post-World War II period. The Scandinavian route towards the modern class
structure was paved with the strong position of the peasantry, the weakening posi-
tion of the landlords, and with the peaceful and rather easy access of the working
class to the parliamentary system and to labour market negotiations. This inheri-
tance is seen in small income differences and in the almost non-existence of poverty
(Fritzell & Lundberg, 2005, pp. 164–185; Ringen & Uusitalo, 1992, pp. 69–91).
The combination of progressive income tax systems and universal, and relatively
generous, social security and welfare systems has implied redistribution, little pov-
erty (in relative and absolute terms) and egalitarian income distributions. According
to recent OECD statistics, all five Nordic countries are among the 8–10 nations of
the world with the most equal distribution of disposable household income,4 with
Denmark, Norway and Sweden among the top five. Moreover, Scandinavia is
famous for her—comparatively speaking—small gender differences. When the
municipalities share a great part of the responsibilities for childcare and care of the
old and disabled and when the employment rates of women are high, the gender
differences play a lesser role in the Nordic countries than in other parts of the

4
This statement on most equal “in the world” is most likely justified although the OECD statistics
only cover its 34 member countries.
1 Welfare States with Nordic Characteristics 9

advanced world (cf. Lewis, 1992; Sainsbury, 1999). Keeping in mind the relatively
high level of welfare benefits, the extensive public services, and women’s relatively
good position in the labour market it has been, somewhat ironically, pointed out that
Scandinavian men are “emancipated from the tyranny of the labour market and
Scandinavian women are emancipated from the tyranny of the family” (Alestalo &
Flora, 1994, pp. 54–55).

1.6 Actual Forms of Governance

The Nordic model is normally identified by reference to characteristics of welfare

state institutions (stateness and universalism) and welfare policy outcomes (equal-
ity). But it seems appropriate to add a fourth component, namely forms of gover-
nance—which refers to the way in—or process through—which political decisions
are made. In this respect, the decade of the 1930s represented a political watershed
in all Nordic countries with national class compromises between industrial and agri-
cultural/primary sector interests, and between labour and capital through the major
trade union federations and employers’ associations. These compromises also came
to be reflected at the parliamentary and governmental level, with political compro-
mises reached across parties representing various class or economic interests. From
the late 1920s, Denmark was ahead acting as a policy role-model not least for
Swedish social reformers (Nystrøm, 1989). Nevertheless, the title of book men-
tioned, by the American journalist Marquis Childs, on Sweden: The Middle Way
(1936) captures the path-breaking change of Nordic politics in the 1930s. The poli-
tics of the 1930s came to be formative for the kind of Nordic (welfare) model exist-
ing today, though these achievements at the time remained precarious and, from a
broader European perspective, peripheral. A wide concept of the Nordic model must
include aspects of the actual forms of governance in the Nordic countries, the evolu-
tion of a specific pattern for conflict resolution and creation of policy legitimacy as
basis for political decision-making and authoritative decisions. This pattern has
developed over a long period of time and is characterized by the active involvement
by and participation in various, often institutionalized, ways of civil society organi-
zations in political processes before decisions are formally made by parliaments and
governments, most particularly pronounced through triangular relationships
between government, trade unions, employers’ associations or similar organizations
in, for instance, the agricultural sector. This system of governance may be labelled
“consensual governance”. The Nordic countries are small and unitary, which make
decision-making easier than in big and/or federal states. The case of Finland’s
development towards a consensual democracy has been more dramatic than in the
other cases: it is a long distance in politics and time from the Civil War of 1918 to
the strongest example of consensus-building in peacetime Nordic politics repre-
sented by the “Rainbow Coalition” government—comprising the parties of the
communists, social democrats, liberals and conservatives—of the early 1990s,
which was established to set the Finnish economy and welfare state right after the
10 S. Kuhnle

dramatic economic downturn partly caused by the break-down of the Soviet Union
and an abrupt loss of substantial foreign trade. “Consensual democracies” is a term
that generally fits developments since the mid-1930s, and particularly since 1945,
also reflected in several book titles (Elder, Thomas, & Arter, 1988; Rustow, 1955).
Consensus-making has become an important element of Nordic politics partly for
the simple fact that coalition governments are the rule—especially in Denmark and
Finland—, and—in particular for Denmark, Norway and Sweden—the prevalence
of minority coalition governments. Denmark is a world champion when it comes to
scope of minority governments. The Nordic tradition of what can be called “nega-
tive parliamentarism”—that the government does not have to be positively or con-
structively based on a majority in the parliament nor to be installed by a parliamentary
majority—has logically appealed to the art of making political compromises: sus-
tainable political decisions can hardly be made without parties in advance consult-
ing each other, creating mutual trust, and without government parties consulting
opposition parties at any time. The consensual style of Nordic politics and the expe-
rience of long-term multiparty parliamentary and/or governmental responsibilities
is one reason why it makes more sense to use the geographical adjective “Nordic”
rather than – as many of my social science colleagues do – use the narrower,
political-­ideological adjective “social democratic” when naming the “model”. A
partial exception to this picture is Sweden, where the Social Democrats throughout
the twentieth century had a more dominant position, and where debates on princi-
ples of social reforms at times appear to have been more polarized (Lindbom &
Rothstein, 2004).

1.7 Nordic Cooperation

A note must also be made on the development of Nordic cooperation in the field of
social policy—and the consolidation of a Nordic identity—as factors being condu-
cive to the development of the Nordic (welfare) model. The development of formal
inter-Scandinavian cooperation between parliamentarians started already in 1907.
In this field of policy, the first of many regular joint Scandinavian top political-­
administrative meetings took place in Copenhagen in 1919. Finland and Iceland
joined these meetings in the 1920s, and according to an overview provided by
Petersen (2006) there were over the years 14 such Nordic meetings of social policy-
makers before the Nordic convention on social security was decided in 1955, after
the establishment of the Nordic Council in 1952, and which Finland was “allowed”
(by the Soviet Union) to join in 1955. These developments inaugurated sustained
Nordic cooperation to this day across many public policy areas. A common, com-
parative and comparable, Nordic social statistics was established in 1946. Not least
the fact that the Nordic countries pioneered transnational regional cooperation after
World War II has been conducive to the maturing of a concept of a “Nordic model”.
And this cooperation developed in spite of different foreign policy orientations—
differences mainly due to the war experience and geopolitical realities during the
1 Welfare States with Nordic Characteristics 11

Cold War—ranging from NATO-membership in the Western Nordic countries

(Denmark, Iceland, Norway) over Swedish neutrality to a friendship pact between
Finland and the Soviet Union in the Eastern part of the Far North. It says something
about the historical strength of Nordic identity and the strength of relation-building
developed both at governmental and non-governmental levels over a long period of
time prior to World War II that Nordic political cooperation could be strongly insti-
tutionalized in the early developing years of divisive Cold War mentality and inter-
national relations. After the end of the Soviet Empire, the countries still relate
differently to both NATO and the EU (Only Denmark, Finland and Sweden are
members, and only Finland has introduced the Euro), but a common Nordic identity
prevails and is given outlet both in common Nordic and in other international fora.
Nordic unity on issues of human rights, welfare and politics is often expressed
through UN and other international organizations. The period ever since the early
1930s can, in terms of welfare state development in the Nordic countries, be char-
acterized as one of domestic consensus-building and common Nordic identity-­
building. These two elements are crucial pillars of the conception of a Nordic model.

1.8 Social and Political Stability

A last reflection should be added, namely that the particular Nordic combination of
stateness, universalism, equality, forms of governance, and let me also include
cross-national cooperation, taken as a whole, distinguishes the Nordic welfare states
from other Western welfare states. This combination of political organization, poli-
cies, institutions, principles, and social and economic outcomes, has—in compari-
son with other Western countries and types of welfare states—not been a brake on
long-term economic development and growth (as measured by growth of GDP and
GDP per capita), and it has been conducive to high levels of trust in government
institutions, including trust in an efficient and effective public administration, and
high levels of social and political stability. Comprehensive, egalitarian and rela-
tively generous welfare states can go hand-in-hand with efficient and productive
market economies.

1.9 Challenges and Current Reform Trends

The Nordic countries are traditionally open economies and thus not alien to eco-
nomic globalization. Some would say that this is one of the reasons why “strong”
welfare states have developed in this region of Europe (Katzenstein, 1985).
Globalization and internationalization of the economy has increased during the last
25 years, and made national economies in general more vulnerable to what happens
in the international economy, as the recent global financial crisis has shown. The
Nordic countries are of course also more than before exposed to international
12 S. Kuhnle

economic development, but the existence of well-developed welfare states, with the
characteristics referred to, may in fact be a comparative advantage if a crisis looms.
The welfare state can serve as a buffer towards the risk of sudden increases in pov-
erty and income and social inequality, and the political tensions likely to otherwise
follow from such social upheavals.
Other challenges for the Nordic—as other welfare states—are the changing com-
position of the population given an ageing of the population and persistent lower-­
than-­population-reproduction fertility rates. But demographic changes seem to be
less challenging in the Nordic countries than in many other nations, in Europa and
East Asia. Migration patterns are a bigger “unknown”, and large-scale immigration
can, if it occurs, imply a great challenge for the welfare state as such, and for inte-
gration and social cohesion, but it is a question of what kind of immigration (labour
immigrants; skilled or non-skilled; asylum-seekers; immigration for permanent resi-
dency or for short-term labour?; from where?, etc.) when one shall assess the impact
or significance for the organization, financing and provisions of the welfare state.
Trends towards more privatization of welfare (pensions, health, social care) as
a supplement (or alternative) to public welfare provision can imply a development
towards mixed welfare and a social division of welfare in the future, which may
most likely have implications for both “the politics of welfare” and the format of
state welfare state institutions (less universal? less generous?). On the other hand,
development towards increasing inequality is not popular among the majority of
voters and government and parties may be forced to devise policies to modify
inequalities.
Europeanization of social policy represents another challenge—for better or
worse, also for political decision-making since it may mean less national autonomy
in the field of social policy.
General reform tendencies in Europe over the last two decades are evident in the
field of pensions, health policy and labour market reforms, with more emphasis on
individual responsibility for future pensions; more co-payment in medical or
health care; more targeting of welfare provision and more emphasis on the so-called
“work line”—activation policy with efforts to get unemployed and partially dis-
abled persons back into the labour market. On the other hand, “family policies”
making it possible to reconcile work and family (paid parental leave; kindergartens)
have expanded in most European countries—and beyond Europe. The welfare state
in the Nordic countries and elsewhere has not been substantially de-constructed, but
rather re-constructed with a variety of combinations of benefit cuts (“less of the
same”) and stricter eligibility criteria for receiving benefits (e.g. unemployment
benefits; increase of retirement age).
The Nordic welfare model is not static. It is continuously reforming, adapting to
changing demographic, economic and political challenges, but still retaining the
fundamental characteristics as outlined above. Nordic welfare states have had their
ups and downs during the last four to five decades, but have in a long-term perspec-
tive appeared to be fairly robust and viable. The Nordic countries did not decon-
struct their welfare states, or their public sectors, or their taxation basis in the heyday
of neo-liberalism and the “Washington consensus”. There exists a politically strong
1 Welfare States with Nordic Characteristics 13

normative commitment to the welfare state and a high degree of consensus on its
desirability among main actors. There exists a comparatively speaking high citizen
trust in government institutions which reinforces the legitimacy of the welfare state
construction.

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Chapter 2
Building a Welfare System with Chinese
Characteristics: From a Residual Type
to Moderate Universalism

Yi Pan

2.1 Introduction

In 2017, the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) stated
that the main contradiction of China’s society has changed as socialism with Chinese
characteristics entered a new era: the contradiction between the growing needs of
the people for a better life and unbalanced and inadequate development. Here, a
better life can be explained as well-being, and resolving the contradictions between
growing needs and inequality and inadequacy can be understood as relying on the
construction of a welfare system. Well-being is the goal of all people’s lives, and the
social welfare system is the condition and design to ensure its realization. Under the
new situation, the Chinese welfare system needs to be repositioned: a residual
welfare system with unbalanced and inadequate development needs to be rebuilt as
a welfare system with the principle of moderate universalism.

2.2  he Formation, Problems, and Nature of the Residual

T
Welfare System

2.2.1  Review of the Formation of the Residual Type

A
of Welfare System in China

The development of China’s welfare system has undergone three stages: creation,
reform (coexistence of destruction and innovation), and re-structuring. Looking
back on the course of the construction of China’s welfare system in the past 70 years,

Y. Pan (*)
Institute of Sociology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, China
e-mail: panyi@cass.org.cn

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 15

T.-k. Jing et al. (eds.), Aging Welfare and Social Policy, International
Perspectives on Aging 20, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-10895-3_2
16 Y. Pan

its development has undergone several twists and turns. The welfare system has
developed from the time of state-planned economy domination, to a period of the
state emphasizing an economic reform to be market oriented, and then the govern-
ment put forward the construction of the welfare system with moderate universal-
ism. The reform toward a market economy caused changes in the welfare system. A
welfare system under the socialist planned economic system that was created in the
early days of the People’s Republic of China, with the characteristics of low levels
and wide coverage, has been transformed into a social security system with obvious
features of a residual type, with only some of the people possessing it, and partial
protection measures.
After 1949, with the creation of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the
Chinese socialist welfare system was established, which was based on the principle
of planned economy. In the urban welfare system, the state took the responsibility
of the policy and budget (making regulations and provision of financial support),
and the work units were responsible for the administration of welfare relief and
services (organization and operation). In urban areas, all the welfare benefits
depended on employment. The welfare items included healthcare, medical services,
education, pensions, work-related injuries, housing policies, heating subsidies,
transportation subsidies, and other benefits for women and infants. Because the
work unit provided many benefits, the urban welfare system called the work unit as
a small society. Social assistance in urban areas also included various welfare
institutions to take care of such special groups as “San Wu” (the ‘three no’s:’ people
who have no work ability, no source of livelihood, and no family support), who were
accepted into the social welfare institution.
The rural welfare policy is based on land guarantee, implementing social assis-
tance (including natural disaster relief and poverty assistance), a basic compulsory
education system, a five-guarantee system (that is, providing food, clothing, hous-
ing, healthcare, and funeral services for elderly people who have no family), a coop-
erative medical system, and collective support under a collective economic system.
The rural welfare pattern, called collective welfare, emphasizes mutual help and
other informal support, such as family, relatives, friends, or neighbors.
The welfare system is under a dual social–economic system. By guaranteeing a
relative high living standard for urban residents, by transferring abundant products
from rural areas into city and rural areas with the limitation of formal welfare
provision, the state accomplished its industrial primitive accumulation during the
first decade of the establishment of the PRC, particularly during 1953–1957, to
establish a foundation of industrialism. Although the development of an industry
system leads to inequality between rural and urban areas, the foundation of the
welfare regime in China was built in this period, based on the socialist justice
principle and the guarantee of basic life requirements. This is the first time in the
history of China that the state has established a welfare system for all the people. In
the primary accumulation period, the welfare system is established on the premise
of the priority development of industrial production; although it is based on the dual
structure in urban and rural areas, its purpose is to cover the basic needs of all the
people in all aspects.
2 Building a Welfare System with Chinese Characteristics: From a Residual Type… 17

Since the 1970s, after the beginning of economic reform, the government has
tried to develop a more effective social security system suitable for the market
economy. The social policy of China is beginning to serve economic policy, which
is also deeply influenced by the transition of the western welfare state. During the
1970s, in Europe, the Labour Party had transformed into the New Labour, and
laissez-faire capitalism was dominant. The Western countries were in “transition
from industrial capitalism to financial capitalism (neoliberalism)” (Taylor, 2017).
The international society advocated a reform of welfare privatization, scaling back
the government’s social welfare spending and supply.
During this period, China has advocated welfare individual responsibility and
emphasized the welfare system’s marketization principle and the socialization of
social welfare. The welfare system of the city based on the work unit collapsed, and
the work unit, which used to be called the small society, has become the pure
enterprise production unit. The social security system in the city includes various
insurances such as the pension, medical, industrial injury, unemployment, and other
social insurances. Rural collective welfare has declined with the disintegration of
the people’s commune and the collective economy.
As Anthony Saich, a professor at Harvard University in the United States, has
assessed the reform of the Chinese welfare system at this time: “The responsibility
for the provision of services in the welfare system has shifted from government,
work units or village collectives of rural areas to local governments, families and
religions, even market-oriented organizations” (2012). The result of welfare reform
in Western countries is a rise in social exclusion and poverty, and “increasing
inequality in income, health care and opportunities of life within and between
countries” (Taylor, 2017). In contrast to the trend of neoliberalism, in China the
relevant departments of the state explore the establishment of a rural social security
system, including rural old-age insurance and disaster relief insurance, and have
started a large range of poverty relief and disaster relief measures. By 2017, 800
million Chinese people got out of poverty. The welfare regime in this period is a
social security system with social relief and social insurance characteristics.
Since 2003, China’s welfare system has started to be reconstructed under the
guidance of “people-oriented and building a harmonious society.” In 2003, the third
plenary session of the 16th Central Committee of the CPC of China puts forward the
scientific development idea of “people-oriented and a comprehensive sustainable
development.” The fourth plenary session of the 16th Central Committee of the
CPC puts forward the concept of “building a harmonious socialist society.” in 2007,
the 17th National Congress of the CPC calls for “accelerating social construction
and paying attention to the living standards of the people.” It is clear that the key
issue of “building a harmonious socialist society” is that “all citizens have the rights
to receive education, remuneration, employment, medical care and housing.” Under
this stated guiding ideology, the speed of the construction of a social security sys-
tem in China has quickened, and development of the welfare system under the new
situation is beginning.
Social assistance programs have been expanded and improved. Since 2003,
China’s social assistance system has introduced new items, including housing,
18 Y. Pan

medical, and educational relief policies. In 2016, a total of 14.799 million people in
China received the subsidies of the Minimum Living Security for Urban Residents,
45.765 million people received the subsidies of the Minimum Living Security for
Rural Residents, and 4.969 million rural people received rural special hardship
support.
The coverage of the population by social insurances has expanded. The social
insurance system is composed of “five social insurances and one housing fund,”
which has been established and developed rapidly. In 2016, 378.62 million urban
employees and 508.47 million urban and rural residents participated in the basic old-
age insurance. But in 2002, only 82 million people were covered by basic old-­age
insurance. In 2016, 748.39 million people were enrolled in basic medical insurance,
compared with 100 million in 2002. In 2016, 180.89 million people were covered by
unemployment insurance, compared with 4.4 million in 2002. The coverage of work
injury insurance reached 218.87 million people in 2016, compared with 45.75 mil-
lion in 2002. Maternity insurance covered 184.43 million people in 2016, compared
to 35 million in 2002 (National Bureau of Statistics, 2016) (Fig. 2.1).
Public expenditure on social welfare continues to grow. In 2007, expenditure for
education accounted for 2.9% of the gross domestic product (GDP) of the year, and
in 2016 it was 3.77%; public expenditure on medical services was 0.8% in 2007,
and 1.77% in 2016; public expenditure for social security and employment
accounted for 0.2% in 2007, and in 2016 it was 2.9%; housing accounted for 0.8%
of GDP in 2011, and was 0.9% in 2016; public service spending was 2.3% of GDP
in 2011; and urban and rural community construction accounted for 2.5% of GDP
in 2016.

Five insurances (2002-2016)

Unit: ten thousand people

2002 2016

88709

74839

21887
18089 18443
8200 10000
4575 3500
440

old age medical unemployment work-related maternity

injury

Fig. 2.1 Coverage expansion of social insurances in China (unit: 10,000 people)
Another random document with
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contrapuntal music was native to these vaultings. The incorporeal
world of this music was and remained that of the first Gothic, and
even when, much later, polyphonic music rose to such heights as
those of the Matthew Passion, the Eroica, and Tristan and Parsifal, it
became of inward necessity cathedral-like and returned to its home,
the stone language of the Crusade-time. To get rid of every trace of
Classical corporeality, there was brought to bear the full force of a
deeply significant Ornamentation, which defies the delimiting power
of stone with its weirdly impressive transformations of vegetal,
animal and human bodies (St. Pierre in Moissac), which dissolves all
its lines into melodies and variations on a theme, all its façades into
many-voiced fugues, and all the bodiliness of its statuary into a
music of drapery-folds. It is this spirituality that gave their deep
meaning to the gigantic glass-expanses of our cathedral-windows
with their polychrome, translucent and therefore wholly bodiless,
painting—an art that has never and nowhere repeated itself and
forms the completest contrast that can be imagined to the Classical
fresco. It is perhaps in the Sainte-Chapelle at Paris that this
emancipation from bodiliness is most evident. Here the stone
practically vanishes in the gleam of the glass. Whereas the fresco-
painting is co-material with the wall on and with which it has grown
and its colour is effective as material, here we have colours
dependent on no carrying surface but as free in space as organ
notes, and shapes poised in the infinite. Compare with the Faustian
spirit of these churches—almost wall-less, loftily vaulted, irradiated
with many-coloured light, aspiring from nave to choir—the Arabian
(that is, the Early-Christian Byzantine) cupola-church. The
pendentive cupola, that seems to float on high above the basilica or
the octagon, was indeed also a victory over the principle of natural
gravity which the Classical expressed in architrave and column; it,
too, was a defiance of architectural body, of “exterior.” But the very
absence of an exterior emphasizes the more the unbroken
coherence of the wall that shuts in the Cavern and allows no look
and no hope to emerge from it. An ingeniously confusing
interpenetration of spherical and polygonal forms; a load so placed
upon a stone drum that it seems to hover weightless on high, yet
closing the interior without outlet; all structural lines concealed;
vague light admitted, through a small opening in the heart of the
dome but only the more inexorably to emphasize the walling-in—
such are the characters that we see in the masterpieces of this art,
S. Vitale in Ravenna, Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, and the Dome
of the Rock[237] in Jerusalem. Where the Egyptian puts reliefs that
with their flat planes studiously avoid any foreshortening suggestive
of lateral depth, where the Gothic architects put their pictures of
glass to draw in the world of space without, the Magian clothes his
walls with sparkling, predominantly golden, mosaics and arabesques
and so drowns his cavern in that unreal, fairy-tale light which for
Northerners is always so seductive in Moorish art.
 VI
The phenomenon of the great style, then, is an emanation from
the essence of the Macrocosm, from the prime-symbol of a great
culture. No one who can appreciate the connotation of the word
sufficiently to see that it designates not a form-aggregate but a form-
history, will try to aline the fragmentary and chaotic art-utterances of
primitive mankind with the comprehensive certainty of a style that
consistently develops over centuries. Only the art of great Cultures,
the art that has ceased to be only art and has begun to be an
effective unit of expression and significance, possesses style.
The organic history of a style comprises a "pre—," a "non—" and a
"post—." The bull tablet of the First Dynasty of Egypt[238] is not yet
“Egyptian.” Not till the Third Dynasty do the works acquire a style—
but then they do so suddenly and very definitely. Similarly the
Carolingian period stands “between-styles.” We see different forms
touched on and explored, but nothing of inwardly necessary
expression. The creator of the Aachen Minster “thinks surely and
builds surely, but does not feel surely.”[239] The Marienkirche in the
Castle of Würzburg (c. 700) has its counterpart in Salonika (St.
George), and the Church of St. Germigny des Près (c. 800) with its
cupolas and horseshoe niches is almost a mosque. For the whole of
West Europe the period 850-950 is almost a blank. And just so to-
day Russian art stands between two styles. The primitive wooden
architecture with its steep eight-sided tent-roof (which extends from
Norway to Manchuria) is impressed with Byzantine motives from
over the Danube and Armenian-Persian from over the Caucasus.
We can certainly feel an “elective affinity” between the Russian and
the Magian souls, but as yet the prime symbol of Russia, the plane
without limit,[240] finds no sure expression either in religion or in
architecture. The church roof emerges, hillock-wise, but little from
the landscape and on it sit the tent-roofs whose points are coifed
with the “kokoshniks” that suppress and would abolish the upward
tendency. They neither tower up like the Gothic belfry nor enclose
like the mosque-cupola, but sit, thereby emphasizing the
horizontality of the building, which is meant to be regarded merely
from the outside. When about 1760 the Synod forbade the tent roofs
and prescribed the orthodox onion-cupolas, the heavy cupolas were
set upon slender cylinders, of which there may be any number[241]
and which sit on the roof-plane.[242] It is not yet a style, only the
promise of a style that will awaken when the real Russian religion
awakens.
In the Faustian West, this awakening happened shortly before A.D.
1000. In one moment, the Romanesque style was there. Instead of
the fluid organization of space on an insecure ground plan, there
was, suddenly, a strict dynamic of space. From the very beginning,
inner and outer construction were placed in a fixed relation, the wall
was penetrated by the form-language and the form worked into the
wall in a way that no other Culture has ever imagined. From the very
beginning the window and the belfry were invested with their
meanings. The form was irrevocably assigned. Only its development
remained to be worked out.
The Egyptian style began with another such creative act, just as
unconscious, just as full of symbolic force. The prime symbol of the
Way came into being suddenly with the beginning of the Fourth
Dynasty (2930 B.C.). The world-creating depth-experience of this soul
gets its substance from the direction-factor itself. Spatial depth as
stiffened Time, distance, death, Destiny itself dominate the
expression, and the merely sensuous dimensions of length and
breadth become an escorting plane which restricts and prescribes
the Way of destiny. The Egyptian flat-relief, which is designed to be
seen at close quarters and arranged serially so as to compel the
beholder to pass along the wall-planes in the prescribed direction,
appears with similar suddenness about the beginning of the Fifth
Dynasty.[243] The still later avenues of sphinxes and statues and the
rock- and terrace-temples constantly intensify that tendency towards
the one distance that the world of Egyptian mankind knows, the
grave. Observe how soon the colonnades of the early period come
to be systems of huge, close-set pillars that screen off all side-view.
This is something that has never reproduced itself in any other
architecture.
 The grandeur of this style appears to us as rigid and unchanging.
And certainly it stands beyond the passion which is ever seeking and
fearing and so imparts to subordinate characters a quality of restless
personal movement in the flow of the centuries. But, vice versa, we
cannot doubt that to an Egyptian the Faustian style (which is our
style, from earliest Romanesque to Rococo and Empire) would with
its unresting persistent search for a Something, appear far more
uniform than we can imagine. It follows, we must not forget, from the
conception of style that we are working on here, that Romanesque,
Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque and Rococo are only stages of one
and the same style, in which it is naturally the variable that we and
the constant that men of other eyes remark. In actual fact, the inner
unity of the Northern Renaissance is shown in innumerable
reconstructions of Romanesque work in Baroque and of late Gothic
work in Rococo that are not in the least startling. In peasant art,
Gothic and Baroque have been identical, and the streets of old
towns with their pure harmony of all sorts of gables and façades
(wherein definite attributions to Romanesque or Gothic Renaissance
or Baroque or Rococo are often quite impossible) show that the
family resemblance between the members is far greater than they
themselves realize.
The Egyptian style was purely architectural, and remained so till
the Egyptian soul was extinguished. It is the only one in which
Ornamentation as a decorative supplement to architecture is entirely
absent. It allowed of no divergence into arts of entertainment, no
display-painting, no busts, no secular music. In the Ionic phase, the
centre of gravity of the Classical style shifted from architecture to an
independent plastic art; in that of the Baroque the style of the West
passed into music, whose form-language in its turn ruled the entire
building art of the 18th Century; in the Arabian world, after Justinian
and Chosroes-Nushirvan, Arabesque dissolved all the forms of
architecture, painting and sculpture into style-impressions that
nowadays we should consider as craft-art. But in Egypt the
sovereignty of architecture remained unchallenged; it merely
softened its language a little. In the chambers of the pyramid-temple
of the Fourth Dynasty (Pyramid of Chephren) there are unadorned
angular pillars. In the buildings of the Fifth (Pyramid of Sahu-rê) the
plant-column makes its appearance. Lotus and papyrus branches
turned into stone arise gigantic out of a pavement of transparent
alabaster that represents water, enclosed by purple walls. The
ceiling is adorned with birds and stars. The sacred way from the
gate-buildings to the tomb-chamber, the picture of life, is a stream—it
is the Nile itself become one with the prime-symbol of direction. The
spirit of the mother-landscape unites with the soul that has sprung
from it.
In China, in lieu of the awe-inspiring pylon with its massy wall and
narrow entrance, we have the “Spirit-wall” (yin-pi) that conceals the
way in. The Chinaman slips into life and thereafter follows the Tao of
life’s path; as the Nile valley is to the up-and-down landscape of the
Hwang Ho, so is the stone-enclosed temple-way to the mazy paths
of Chinese garden-architecture. And just so, in some mysterious
fashion, the Euclidean existence is linked with the multitude of little
islands and promontories of the Ægean, and the passionate
Western, roving in the infinite, with the broad plains of Franconia and
Burgundy and Saxony.

VII

The Egyptian style is the expression of a brave soul. The rigour

and force of it Egyptian man himself never felt and never asserted.
He dared all, but said nothing. In Gothic and Baroque, on the
contrary, the triumph over heaviness became a perfectly conscious
motive of the form-language. The drama of Shakespeare deals
openly with the desperate conflict of will and world. Classical man,
again, was weak in the face of the “powers.” The κάθαρσις of fear
and pity, the relief and recovery of the Apollinian soul in the moment
of the περιπέτεια was, according to Aristotle, the effect deliberately
aimed at in Attic tragedy. As the Greek spectator watched someone
whom he knew (for everyone knew the myth and its heroes and lived
in them) senselessly maltreated by fortune, without any conceivable
possibility of resistance to the Powers, and saw him go under with
splendid mien, defiant, heroic, his own Euclidean soul experienced a
marvellous uplifting. If life was worthless, at any rate the grand
gesture in losing it was not so. The Greek willed nothing and dared
nothing, but he found a stirring beauty in enduring. Even the earlier
figures of Odysseus the patient, and, above all, Achilles the
archetype of Greek manhood, have this characteristic quality. The
morale of the Cynics, that of the Stoics, that of Epicurus, the
common Greek ideals of σωφροσύνη and ἀταραξἰα, Diogenes
devoting himself to θεωρία in a tub—all this is masked cowardice in
the face of grave matters and responsibilities, and different indeed
from the pride of the Egyptian soul. Apollinian man goes below
ground out of life’s way, even to the point of suicide, which in this
Culture alone (if we ignore certain related Indian ideals) ranked as a
high ethical act and was treated with the solemnity of a ritual symbol.
[244]
The Dionysiac intoxication seems a sort of furious drowning of
uneasinesses that to the Egyptian soul were utterly unknown. And
consequently the Greek Culture is that of the small, the easy, the
simple. Its technique is, compared with Egyptian or Babylonian, a
clever nullity.[245] No ornamentation shows such a poverty of
invention as theirs, and their stock of sculptural positions and
attitudes could be counted on one’s fingers. “In its poverty of forms,
which is conspicuous even allowing that at the beginning of its
development it may have been better off than it was later, the Doric
style pivoted everything on proportions and on measure.”[246] Yet,
even so, what adroitness in avoiding! The Greek architecture with its
commensuration of load and support and its peculiar smallness of
scale suggests a persistent evasion of difficult architectural problems
that on the Nile and, later, in the high North were literally looked for,
which moreover were known and certainly not burked in the
Mycenæan age. The Egyptian loved the strong stone of immense
buildings; it was in keeping with his self-consciousness that he
should choose only the hardest for his task. But the Greek avoided it;
his architecture first set itself small tasks, then ceased altogether. If
we survey it as a whole, and then compare it with the totality of
Egyptian or Mexican or even, for that matter, Western architecture,
we are astounded at the feeble development of the style. A few
variations of the Doric temple and it was exhausted. It was already
closed off about 400 when the Corinthian capital was invented, and
everything subsequent to this was merely modification of what
existed.
 The result of this was an almost bodily standardization of form-
types and style-species. One might choose between them, but never
overstep their strict limits—that would have been in some sort an
admission of an infinity of possibilities. There were three orders of
columns and a definite disposition of the architrave corresponding to
each; to deal with the difficulty (considered, as early as Vitruvius, as
a conflict) which the alternation of triglyphs and metopes produced at
the corners, the nearest intercolumniations were narrowed—no one
thought of imagining new forms to suit the case. If greater
dimensions were desired, the requirements were met by
superposition, juxtaposition, etc., of additional elements. Thus the
Colosseum possesses three rings, the Didymæum of Miletus three
rows of columns in front, and the Frieze of the Giants of Pergamum
an endless succession of individual and unconnected motives.
Similarly with the style-species of prose and the types of lyric poetry,
narrative and tragedy. Universally, the expenditure of powers on the
basic form is restricted to the minimum and the creative energy of
the artist directed to detail-fineness. It is a statical treatment of static
genera, and it stands in the sharpest possible contrast to the
dynamic fertility of the Faustian with its ceaseless creation of new
types and domains of form.

VIII

We are now able to see the organism in a great style-course.

Here, as in so many other matters, Goethe was the first to whom
vision came. In his “Winckelmann” he says of Velleius Paterculus:
“with his standpoint, it was not given to him to see all art as a living
thing (ζῶον) that must have an inconspicuous beginning, a slow
growth, a brilliant moment of fulfilment and a gradual decline like
every other organic being, though it is presented in a set of
individuals.” This sentence contains the entire morphology of art-
history. Styles do not follow one another like waves or pulse-beats. It
is not the personality or will or brain of the artist that makes the style,
but the style that makes the type of the artist. The style, like the
Culture, is a prime phenomenon in the strictest Goethian sense, be it
the style of art or religion or thought, or the style of life itself. It is, as
“Nature” is, an ever-new experience of waking man, his alter ego
and mirror-image in the world-around. And therefore in the general
historical picture of a Culture there can be but one style, the style of
the Culture. The error has lain in treating mere style-phases—
Romanesque, Gothic, Baroque, Rococo, Empire—as if they were
styles on the same level as units of quite another order such as the
Egyptian, the Chinese (or even a “prehistoric”) style. Gothic and
Baroque are simply the youth and age of one and the same vessel of
forms, the style of the West as ripening and ripened. What has been
wanting in our art-research has been detachment, freedom from
prepossessions, and the will to abstract. Saving ourselves trouble,
we have classed any and every form-domain that makes a strong
impression upon us as a “style,” and it need hardly be said that our
insight has been led astray still further by the Ancient-Mediæval-
Modern scheme. But in reality, even a masterpiece of strictest
Renaissance like the court of the Palazzo Farnese is infinitely nearer
to the arcade-porch of St. Patroclus in Soest, the interior of the
Magdeburg cathedral, and the staircases of South-German castles
of the 18th Century than it is to the Temple of Pæstum or to the
Erechtheum. The same relation exists between Doric and Ionic, and
hence Ionic columns can be as completely combined with Doric
building forms as late Gothic is with early Baroque in St. Lorenz at
Nürnberg, or late Romanesque with late Baroque in the beautiful
upper part of the West choir at Mainz. And our eyes have scarcely
yet learned to distinguish within the Egyptian style the Old Kingdom
and Middle Empire elements corresponding to Doric and Gothic
youth and to Ionic and Baroque maturity, because from the Twelfth
Dynasty these elements interpenetrate in all harmony in the form-
language of all the greater works.
The task before art-history is to write the comparative biographies
of the great styles, all of which as organisms of the same genus
possess structurally cognate life histories.
In the beginning there is the timid, despondent, naked expression
of a newly-awakened soul which is still seeking for a relation
between itself and the world that, though its proper creation, yet is
presented as alien and unfriendly. There is the child’s fearfulness in
Bishop Bernward’s building at Hildesheim, in the Early-Christian
catacomb-painting, and in the pillar-halls of the Egyptian Fourth
Dynasty. A February of art, a deep presentiment of a coming wealth
of forms, an immense suppressed tension, lies over the landscape
that, still wholly rustic, is adorning itself with the first strongholds and
townlets. Then follows the joyous mounting into the high Gothic, into
the Constantinian age with its pillared basilicas and its domical
churches, into the relief-ornament of the Fifth-Dynasty temple. Being
is understood, a sacred form-language has been completely
mastered and radiates its glory, and the Style ripens into a majestic
symbolism of directional depth and of Destiny. But fervent youth
comes to an end, and contradictions arise within the soul itself. The
Renaissance, the Dionysiac-musical hostility to Apollinian Doric, the
Byzantine of 450 that looks to Alexandria and away from the
overjoyed art of Antioch, indicate a moment of resistance, of
effective or ineffective impulse to destroy what has been acquired. It
is very difficult to elucidate this moment, and an attempt to do so
would be out of place here.
And now it is the manhood of the style-history that comes on. The
Culture is changing into the intellectuality of the great cities that will
now dominate the country-side, and pari passu the style is becoming
intellectualized also. The grand symbolism withers; the riot of
superhuman forms dies down; milder and more worldly arts drive out
the great art of developed stone. Even in Egypt sculpture and fresco
are emboldened to lighter movement. The artist appears, and “plans”
what formerly grew out of the soil. Once more existence becomes
self-conscious and now, detached from the land and the dream and
the mystery, stands questioning, and wrestles for an expression of its
new duty—as at the beginning of Baroque when Michelangelo, in
wild discontent and kicking against the limitations of his art, piles up
the dome of St. Peter’s—in the age of Justinian I which built Hagia
Sophia and the mosaic-decked domed basilicas of Ravenna—at the
beginning of that Twelfth Dynasty in Egypt which the Greeks
condensed under the name of Sesostris—and at the decisive epoch
in Hellas (c. 600) whose architecture probably, nay certainly,
expressed that which is echoed for us in its grandchild Æschylus.
Then comes the gleaming autumn of the style. Once more the soul
depicts its happiness, this time conscious of self-completion. The
“return to Nature” which already thinkers and poets—Rousseau,
Gorgias and their “contemporaries” in the other Cultures—begin to
feel and to proclaim, reveals itself in the form-world of the arts as a
sensitive longing and presentiment of the end. A perfectly clear
intellect, joyous urbanity, the sorrow of a parting—these are the
colours of these last Culture-decades of which Talleyrand was to
remark later: “Qui n’a pas vécu avant 1789 ne connaît pas la
douceur de vivre.” So it was, too, with the free, sunny and superfine
art of Egypt under Sesostris III (c. 1850 B.C.) and the brief moments
of satiated happiness that produced the varied splendour of
Pericles’s Acropolis and the works of Zeuxis and Phidias. A
thousand years later again, in the age of the Ommaiyads, we meet it
in the glad fairyland of Moorish architecture with its fragile columns
and horseshoe arches that seem to melt into air in an iridescence of
arabesques and stalactites. A thousand years more, and we see it in
the music of Haydn and Mozart, in Dresden shepherdesses, in the
pictures of Watteau and Guardi, and the works of German master-
builders at Dresden, Potsdam, Würzburg and Vienna.
Then the style fades out. The form-language of the Erechtheum
and the Dresden Zwinger, honeycombed with intellect, fragile, ready
for self-destruction, is followed by the flat and senile Classicism that
we find in the Hellenistic megalopolis, the Byzantium of 900 and the
“Empire” modes of the North. The end is a sunset reflected in forms
revived for a moment by pedant or by eclectic—semi-earnestness
and doubtful genuineness dominate the world of the arts. We to-day
are in this condition—playing a tedious game with dead forms to
keep up the illusion of a living art.

IX

No one has yet perceived that Arabian art is a single

phenomenon. It is an idea that can only take shape when we have
ceased to be deceived by the crust which overlaid the young East
with post-Classical art-exercises that, whether they were imitation-
antique or chose their elements from proper or alien sources at will,
were in any case long past all inward life; when we have discovered
that Early Christian art, together with every really living element in
“late-Roman,” is in fact the springtime of the Arabian style; and when
we see the epoch of Justinian I as exactly on a par with the Spanish-
Venetian Baroque that ruled Europe in the great days of Charles V or
Philip II, and the palaces of Byzantium and their magnificent battle-
pictures and pageant-scenes—the vanished glories that inspired the
pens of courtly literati like Procopius—on a par with the palaces of
early Baroque in Madrid, Vienna and Rome and the great
decorative-painting of Rubens and Tintoretto. This Arabian style
embraces the entire first millennium of our era. It thus stands at a
critical position in the picture of a general history of “Art,” and its
organic connectedness has been imperceptible under the erroneous
conventions thereof.[247]
Strange and—if these studies have given us the eye for things
latent—moving it is to see how this young Soul, held in bondage to
the intellect of the Classical and, above all, to the political
omnipotence of Rome, dares not rouse itself into freedom but
humbly subjects itself to obsolete value-forms and tries to be content
with Greek language, Greek ideas and Greek art-elements. Devout
acceptance of the powers of the strong day is present in every young
Culture and is the sign of its youth—witness the humility of Gothic
man in his pious high-arched spaces with their pillar-statuary and
their light-filled pictures in glass, the high tension of the Egyptian
soul in the midst of its world of pyramids, lotus-columns and relief-
lined halls. But in this instance there is the additional element of an
intellectual prostration before forms really dead but supposedly
eternal. Yet in spite of all, the taking-over and continuance of these
forms came to nothing. Involuntarily, unobserved, not supported by
an inherent pride as Gothic was, but felt, there in Roman Syria,
almost as a lamentable come-down, a whole new form-world grew
up. Under a mask of Græco-Roman conventions, it filled even Rome
itself. The master-masons of the Pantheon and the Imperial Fora
were Syrians. In no other example is the primitive force of a young
soul so manifest as here, where it has to make its own world by
sheer conquest.
In this as in every other Culture, Spring seeks to express its
spirituality in a new ornamentation and, above all, in religious
architecture as the sublime form of that ornamentation. But of all this
rich form-world the only part that (till recently) has been taken into
account has been the Western edge of it, which consequently has
been assumed to be the true home and habitat of Magian style-
history. In reality, in matters of style as in those of religion, science
and social-political life, what we find there is only an irradiation from
outside the Eastern border of the Empire.[248] Riegl[249] and
Strzygowski[250] have discovered this, but if we are to go further and
arrive at a conspectus of the development of Arabian art we have to
shed many philological and religious prepossessions. The misfortune
is that our art-research, although it no longer recognizes the religious
frontiers, nevertheless unconsciously assumes them. For there is in
reality no such thing as a Late-Classical nor an Early-Christian nor
yet an Islamic art in the sense of an art proper to each of those faiths
and evolved by the community of believers as such. On the contrary,
the totality of these religions—from Armenia to Southern Arabia and
Axum, and from Persia to Byzantium and Alexandria—possess a
broad uniformity of artistic expression that overrides the
contradictions of detail.[251] All these religions, the Christian, the
Jewish, the Persian, the Manichæan, the Syncretic,[252] possessed
cult-buildings and (at any rate in their script) an Ornamentation of the
first rank; and however different the items of their dogmas, they are
all pervaded by an homogeneous religiousness and express it in a
homogeneous symbolism of depth-experience. There is something
in the basilicas of Christianity, Hellenistic, Hebrew and Baal-cults,
and in the Mithræum,[253] the Mazdaist fire-temple and the Mosque,
that tells of a like spirituality: it is the Cavern-feeling.
It becomes therefore the bounden duty of research to seek to
establish the hitherto completely neglected architecture of the South-
Arabian and Persian temple, the Syrian and the Mesopotamian
synagogue, the cult-buildings of Eastern Asia Minor and even
Abyssinia;[254] and in respect of Christianity to investigate no longer
merely the Pauline West but also the Nestorian East that stretched
from the Euphrates to China, where the old records significantly call
its buildings “Persian temples.” If in all this building practically
nothing has, so far, forced itself specially upon our notice, it is fair to
suppose that both the advance of Christianity first and that of Islam
later could change the religion of a place of worship without
contradicting its plan and style. We know that this is the case with
Late Classical temples: but how many of the churches in Armenia
may once have been fire-temples?
The artistic centre of this Culture was very definitely—as
Strzygowski has observed—in the triangle of cities Edessa, Nisibis,
Amida. To the westward of it is the domain of the Late-Classical
“Pseudomorphosis,”[255] the Pauline Christianity that conquered in the
councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon,[256] Western Judaism and the
cults of Syncretism. The architectural type of the Pseudomorphosis,
both for Jew and Gentile, is the Basilica.[257] It employs the means of
the Classical to express the opposite thereof, and is unable to free
itself from these means—that is the essence and the tragedy of
“Pseudomorphosis.” The more “Classical” Syncretism modifies a cult
that is resident in a Euclidean place into one which is professed by a
community of indefinite estate, the more the interior of the temple
gains in importance over the exterior without needing to change
either plan or roof or columns very much. The space-feeling is
different, but not—at first—the means of expressing it. In the pagan
religious architecture of the Imperial Age there is a perceptible—
though never yet perceived—movement from the wholly corporeal
Augustan temple, in which the cella is the architectural expression of
nothingness, to one in which the interior only possesses meaning.
Finally the external picture of the Peripteros of the Doric is
transferred to the four inside walls. Columns ranked in front of a
windowless wall are a denial of space beyond—that is, for the
Classical beholder, of space within, and for the Magian, of space
without. It is therefore a question of minor importance whether the
entire space is covered in as in the Basilica proper, or only the
sanctuary as in the Sun-temple of Baalbek with the great forecourt,
[258]
which later becomes a standing element of the mosque and is
probably of South Arabian origin.[259] That the Nave originates in a
court surrounded by halls is suggested not only by the special
development of the basilica-type in the East Syrian steppe
(particularly Hauran) but also by the basic disposition of porch, nave
and choir as stages leading to the altar—for the aisles (originally the
side-halls of the court) end blind, and only the nave proper
corresponds with the apse. This basic meaning is very evident in St.
Paul at Rome, albeit the Pseudomorphosis (inversion of the
Classical temple) dictated the technical means, viz., column and
architrave. How symbolic is the Christian reconstruction of the
Temple of Aphrodisias in Caria, in which the cella within the columns
is abolished and replaced by a new wall outside them.[260]
Outside the domain of the “Pseudomorphosis,” on the contrary, the
cavern-feeling was free to develop its own form-language, and here
therefore it is the definite roof that is emphasized (whereas in the
other domain the protest against the Classical feeling led merely to
the development of an interior). When and where the various
possibilities of dome, cupola, barrel-vaulting, rib-vaulting, came into
existence as technical methods is, as we have already said, a matter
of no significance. What is of decisive importance is the fact that
about the time of Christ’s birth and the rise of the new world-feeling,
the new space-symbolism must have begun to make use of these
forms and to develop them further in expressiveness. It will very
likely come to be shown that the fire-temples and synagogues of
Mesopotamia (and possibly also the temples of Athtar in Southern
Arabia) were originally cupola-buildings.[261] Certainly the pagan
marna-temple at Gaza was so, and long before Pauline Christianity
took possession of these forms under Constantine, builders of
Eastern origin had introduced them, as novelties to please the taste
of the Megalopolitans, into all parts of the Roman Empire. In Rome
itself, Apollodorus of Damascus was employed under Trajan for the
vaulting of the temple of “Venus and Rome,” and the domed
chambers of the Baths of Caracalla and the so-called “Minerva
Medica” of Gallienus’s time were built by Syrians. But the
masterpiece, the earliest of all Mosques, is the Pantheon as rebuilt
by Hadrian. Here, without a doubt, the emperor was imitating, for the
satisfaction of his own taste, cult-buildings that he had seen in the
East.[262]
The architecture of the central-dome, in which the Magian world-
feeling achieved its purest expression, extended beyond the limits of
the Roman Empire. For the Nestorian Christianity that extended from
Armenia even into China it was the only form, as it was also for the
Manichæns and the Mazdaists, and it also impressed itself
victoriously upon the Basilica of the West when the
Pseudomorphosis began to crumble and the last cults of Syncretism
to die out. In Southern France—where there were Manichæan sects
even as late as the Crusades—the form of the East was
domesticated. Under Justinian, the interpenetration of the two
produced the domical basilica of Byzantium and Ravenna. The pure
basilica was pushed into the Germanic West, there to be
transformed by the energy of the Faustian depth-impulse into the
cathedral. The domed basilica, again, spread from Byzantium and
Armenia into Russia, where it came by slow degrees to be felt as an
element of exterior architecture belonging to a symbolism
concentrated in the roof. But in the Arabian world Islam, the heir of
Monophysite and Nestorian Christianity and of the Jews and the
Persians, carried the development through to the end. When it
turned Hagia Sophia into a mosque it only resumed possession of an
old property. Islamic domical building followed Mazdaist and
Nestorian along the same tracks to Shan-tung and to India. Mosques
grew up in the far West in Spain and Sicily, where, moreover, the
style appears rather in its East-Aramæan-Persian than in its West-
Aramæan-Syrian mode.[263] And while Venice looked to Byzantium
and Ravenna (St. Mark), the brilliant age of the Norman-
Hohenstaufen rule in Palermo taught the cities of the Italian west
coast, and even Florence, to admire and to imitate these Moorish
buildings. More than one of the motives that the Renaissance
thought were Classical—e.g., the court surrounded by halls and the
union of column and arch—really originated thus.
What is true as regards architecture is even more so as regards
ornamentation, which in the Arabian world very early overcame all
figure-representation and swallowed it up in itself. Then, as
“arabesque,” it advanced to meet, to charm and to mislead the
young art-intention of the West.
The early-Christian-Late-Classical art of the Pseudomorphosis
shows the same ornament-plus-figure mixture of the inherited “alien”
and the inborn “proper” as does the Carolingian-Early Romanesque
of (especially) Southern France and Upper Italy. In the one case
Hellenistic intermingles with Early-Magian, in the other Mauro-
Byzantine with Faustian. The researcher has to examine line after
line and ornament after ornament to detect the form-feeling which
differentiates the one stratum from the other. In every architrave, in
every frieze, there is to be found a secret battle between the
conscious old and the unconscious, but victorious, new motives. One
is confounded by this general interpenetration of the Late-Hellenistic
and the Early-Arabian form-senses, as one sees it, for example, in
Roman portrait-busts (here it is often only in the treatment of the hair
that the new way of expression is manifested); in the acanthus-
shoots which show—often on one and the same frieze—chisel-work
and drill-work side by side; in the sarcophagi of the 3rd Century in
which a childlike feeling of the Giotto and Pisano character is
entangled with a certain late and megalopolitan Naturalism that
reminds one more or less of David or Carstens; and in buildings
such as the Basilica of Maxentius[264] and many parts of the Baths
and the Imperial Fora that are still very Classical in conception.
Nevertheless, the Arabian soul was cheated of its maturity—like a
young tree that is hindered and stunted in its growth by a fallen old
giant of the forest. Here there was no brilliant instant felt and
experienced as such, like that of ours in which, simultaneously with
the Crusades, the wooden beams of the Cathedral roof locked
themselves into rib-vaulting and an interior was made to actualize
and fulfil the idea of infinite space. The political creation of Diocletian
was shattered in its glory upon the fact that, standing as he did on
Classical ground, he had to accept the whole mass of the
administrative tradition of Urbs Roma; this sufficed to reduce his
work to a mere reform of obsolete conditions. And yet he was the
first of the Caliphs. With him, the idea of the Arabian State emerges
clearly into the light. It is Diocletian’s dispensation, together with that
of the Sassanids which preceded it somewhat and served in all
respects as its model, that gives us the first notion of the ideal that
ought to have gone on to fulfilment here. But so it was in all things.
To this very day we admire as last creations of the Classical—
because we cannot or will not regard them otherwise—the thought of
Plotinus and Marcus Aurelius, the cults of Isis, Mithras and the Sun-
God, the Diophantine mathematics and, lastly, the whole of the art
which streamed towards us from the Eastern marches of the Roman
Empire and for which Antioch and Alexandria were merely points
d’appui.
 This alone is sufficient to explain the intense vehemence with
which the Arabian Culture, when released at length from artistic as
from other fetters, flung itself upon all the lands that had inwardly
belonged to it for centuries past. It is the sign of a soul that feels
itself in a hurry, that notes in fear the first symptoms of old age
before it has had youth. This emancipation of Magian mankind is
without a parallel. Syria is conquered, or rather delivered, in 634.
Damascus falls in 637, Ctesiphon in 637. In 641 Egypt and India are
reached, in 647 Carthage, in 676 Samarkand, in 710 Spain. And in
732 the Arabs stood before Paris. Into these few years was
compressed the whole sum of saved-up passions, postponed hopes,
reserved deeds, that in the slow maturing of other Cultures suffice to
fill the history of centuries. The Crusaders before Jerusalem, the
Hohenstaufen in Sicily, the Hansa in the Baltic, the Teutonic Knights
in the Slavonic East, the Spaniards in America, the Portuguese in
the East Indies, the Empire of Charles V on which the sun never set,
the beginnings of England’s colonial power under Cromwell—the
equivalent of all this was shot out in one discharge that carried the
Arabs to Spain and France, India and Turkestan.
True, all Cultures (the Egyptian, the Mexican and the Chinese
excepted) have grown up under the tutelage of some older Culture.
Each of the form-worlds shows certain alien traits. Thus, the
Faustian soul of the Gothic, already predisposed to reverence by the
Arabian origin of Christianity, grasped at the treasures of Late-
Arabian art. An unmistakably Southern, one might even say an
Arabian, Gothic wove itself over the façades of the Burgundian and
Provençal cathedrals, dominated with a magic of stone the outward
language of Strassburg Minster, and fought a silent battle in statues
and porches, fabric-patterns, carvings and metalwork—and not less
in the intricate figures of scholastic philosophy and in that intensely
Western symbol, the Grail legend[265]—with the Nordic prime-feeling
of Viking Gothic that rules the interior of the Magdeburg Cathedral,
the points of Freiburg Minster and the mysticism of Meister Eckart.
More than once the pointed arch threatens to burst its restraining line
and to transform itself into the horseshoe arch of Moorish-Norman
architecture.
 So also the Apollinian art of the Doric spring—whose first efforts
are practically lost to us—doubtless took over Egyptian elements to
a very large extent, and by and through these came to its own proper
symbolism.
But the Magian soul of the Pseudomorphosis had not the courage
to appropriate alien means without yielding to them. And this is why
the physiognomic of the Magian soul has still so much to disclose to
the quester.

The idea of the Macrocosm, then, which presents itself in the

style-problem as simplified and capable of treatment, poses a
multitude of tasks for the future to tackle. To make the form-world of
the arts available as a means of penetrating the spirituality of entire
Cultures—by handling it in a thoroughly physiognomic and symbolic
spirit—is an undertaking that has not hitherto got beyond
speculations of which the inadequacy is obvious. We are hardly as
yet aware that there may be a psychology of the metaphysical bases
of all great architectures. We have no idea what there is to discover
in the change of meaning that a form of pure extension undergoes
when it is taken over into another Culture. The history of the column
has never yet been written, nor have we any notion of the deeply
symbolic significances that reside in the means and the instruments
of art.
Consider mosaic. In Hellenic times it was made up of pieces of
marble, it was opaque and corporeal-Euclidean (e.g., the famous
Battle of Issus at Naples), and it adorned the floor. But with the
awakening of the Arabian soul it came to be built up of pieces of
glass and set in fused gold, and it simply covered the walls and roofs
of the domed basilica. This Early-Arabian Mosaic-picturing
corresponds exactly, as to phase, with the glass-picturing of Gothic
cathedrals, both being “early” arts ancillary to religious architectures.
The one by letting in the light enlarges the church-space into world-
space, while the other transforms it into the magic, gold-shimmering
sphere which bears men away from earthly actuality into the visions
of Plotinus, Origen, the Manichæans, the Gnostics and the Fathers,
and the Apocalyptic poems.
Consider, again, the beautiful notion of uniting the round arch and
the column; this again is a Syrian, if not a North-Arabian, creation of
the third (or “high Gothic”) century.[266] The revolutionary importance
of this motive, which is specifically Magian, has never in the least
degree been recognized; on the contrary, it has always been
assumed to be Classical, and for most of us indeed it is even
representatively Classical. The Egyptians ignored any deep relation
between the roof and the column; the latter was for them a plant-
column, and represented not stoutness but growth. Classical man, in
his turn, for whom the monolithic column was the mightiest symbol of
Euclidean existence—all body, all unity, all steadiness—connected it,
in the strictest proportions of vertical and horizontal, of strength and
load, with his architrave. But here, in this union of arch and column
which the Renaissance in its tragicomic deludedness admired as
expressly Classical (though it was a notion that the Classical neither
possessed nor could possess), the bodily principle of load and inertia
is rejected and the arch is made to spring clear and open out of the
slender column. The idea actualized here is at once a liberation from
all earth-gravity and a capture of space, and between this element
and that of the dome which soars free but yet encloses the great
“cavern,” there is the deep relation of like meaning. The one and the
other are eminently and powerfully Magian, and they come to their
logical fulfilment in the “Rococo” stage of Moorish mosques and
castles, wherein ethereally delicate columns—often growing out of,
rather than based on, the ground—seem to be empowered by some
secret magic to carry a whole world of innumerable notched arcs,
gleaming ornaments, stalactites, and vaultings saturated with
colours. The full importance of this basic form of Arabian architecture
may be expressed by saying that the combination of column and
architrave is the Classical, that of column and round arch the
Arabian, and that of pillar and pointed arch the Faustian Leitmotiv.
Take, further, the history of the Acanthus motive.[267] In the form in
which it appears, for example, on the Monument of Lysicrates at
Athens, it is one of the most distinctive in Classical ornamentation. It
has body, it is and remains individual, and its structure is capable of