The Autobiography of an Idea quotes

… thrilling and befitting climax—an enormous, a wonderful speckled gray Normandy horse, drawing a heavy tip cart, and followed as a retinue by two men, one sweeping the windrows into hillocks, the other with shovel and with mighty faith, moving these mountains into the great chariot.

Thus appeared from Washington Street, thus passed in orderly action, thus disappeared into Harrison Avenue the Pageant of Labor, leaving the child, alone, thrilled with a sort of alarm of discovery, held by an utter infatuation.

He had missed nothing; he had noted every detail. He had seen it whole and seen it steady. It is a close surmise that what actually passed in the child’s mind, aside from the romance, was a budding sense of orderly power.

The farm-man replied that if the father insisted and would not otherwise be calmed, he would with pleasure accept from him, as a casual gift, a plug of chewing tobacco.

Thus was the value of a man-child ascertained.

In the course of his exploration, he came to the other well, the one in the barn yard with pulley, chain, and big bright tin bucket. He was curious, and began huge experiments.

The children were all barefoot and rather carelessly clad; notably so in the matter of omissions.

One thing is certain and the rest is lies: This school was of, for, and by the people.

The child was given his proper place in the lowest grade, or class, or whatever it was called. He took hold rather blithely. He seemed to feel the importance of his entry into this new world, so different from home.

To call his sharp-eyed grandson a dullard!

Why, he said, one might as well call Sirius a flapjack

, and other joking words to that effect, for he was fond of teasing his grandson, whom he had so long watched out of the corner of his eye. But Grandma, more conservative, took the matter seriously.

This ethereal belief, opened to view the beauty and purity of her heart. Moreover, she read with avidity Renan’s Vie de Jesu.

Grandpa looked upon religion as a curious and amusing human weakness⁠—as conclusive evidence of universal stupidity.

Grandma alone was devout. Quietly she believed in her God;

And the minister had said he was sure they would be. The boy asked at home what Papists were. Grandma said they were Catholics.

Grandpa said they were imbeciles.

Then he asked what were Catholics, and Grandma said, simply, they were not Protestants. And what were Protestants? And Grandma said, as simply, but with a touch of detail, that they were not Catholics, to which Grandpa added that they, also, were imbeciles.

The family had places in the middle—Louis sitting next to Mamma. He was hungry—always hungry. It was their first joint struggle against dyspepsia. Not much was said for a while; then Louis, in confidential tones, suitable to a pasture, uttered this sage judgment:

“Mamma; this gravy isn’t like Grandmamma’s gravy; this is only just a little flour and water!”

Mamma made big eyes and grasped his arm, a titter went along the opposite row, napkins to faces, whispers exchanged, some rude persons laughed, and someone said “Hurrah!” Lucky Grandpa wasn’t there—the ceiling would have fallen.

Little by little the child grasped the idea; he brightened with intelligence. His Father had opened for him then and there a new, an utterly unsuspected world—the world of pure knowledge—vaster than the sea, vaster than the sky.

And for the child, the portal to that limitless world was an illusion⁠—a sinking ship.

Now it was time to return to Boston. The school must open soon. In the bustle of preparation the day he was seven passed unnoticed even by himself. Newburyport departed—Boston came.

The child looked far seaward, without emotion, save a sense of dull platitude, of endless nothingness, of meaningless extension.

The sea was merely rough, without mood, dull in color, spotted here and there by a cloud’s shadow.

It left him indifferent, all except the green and white combing surf which was in merry mood. He wished to wade in but Father said positively no, the beach was too steep, the undertow too strong. Undertow? Undertow?—another word—more explanations.

We do not associate the idea of dream with our strenuous hours of thought and deed in the selfsame broad daylight.

Nor do we see the stars at noon⁠—but they are there.

So is a dream there, within every human, ever—day and night unceasingly.

Thus from the abysm of Memory’s stillness, that child comes into being within Life’s dream, within the dream of eternal time and space; and in him we behold what we were and still are.

Environment may influence but it cannot alter.

For it is the child in multiple and in multiple series that creates the flowing environment of thought and deed that shall continuously mature in its due time.

Such vision was bound to fade. Such fear must pass. And so it happened. The turmoil, the chaos lasted but as the span of a daydream. But within that dream, within that turmoil, there awakened a deeper dream that has not passed.

Thus Louis Sullivan accepted and rejected; rejected and accepted.

He returned to the school and the streets which were much the same thing to him. At recess he promptly announced that he could lick any boy of his size.

while Park Street Church seemed to tower as a loyal guardian above its ancient graveyard, and as friendly monitor of the crowds below. And one day as they looked at Faneuil Hall, Grandpa said of it: “

The Wild Ass of the City stamps above its head but cannot break its sleep.

” This sounded thrilling and imaginary to Louis, like a wild thing out of Julia’s land of enchantment; but Grandpa said he got it out of a book and that its meaning was too deep for the boy—that he was talking to himself.

This sounded thrilling and imaginary to Louis, like a wild thing out of Julia’s land of enchantment; but Grandpa said he got it out of a book and that its meaning was too deep for the boy—that he was talking to himself.

Thus buildings had come to speak to Louis Sullivan in their many jargons.

Some said vile things, some said prudent things, some said pompous things, but none said noble things.

So he asked the man how the architect made the outside of the temple and the man said: “Why, he made it out of his head; and he had books besides.”

The “books besides” repelled Louis: anybody could do that; but the “made it out of his head” fascinated him.

How could a man make so beautiful a building out of his head? What a great man he must be; what a wonderful man. Then and there Louis made up his mind to become an architect and make beautiful buildings “out of his head.”

at large ears; at thin, vagrant, dark, sandy hair; at a sprightly medium figure, all alive. She was clad in dark blue silk. He found in her not beauty but irresistible pervading charm. As he was thus absorbed Minnie said:

“Sit down beside me, Louis dear, and watch me die. Sit very still and watch.”

Whereupon, leaning back in her easy chair, she closed her eyes, deepened her pallor, closed her nostrils, made a thin line of her mouth, elongated her face, and lay deathly still, as though in veritable rigor mortis, until Louis’s nerves were on edge.

Minnie became Louis’s precious teacher. She made him feel he was not being taught, but entertained with gossip. She knew that what she said in persiflage, would later sink in deep, and she knew why it would do so.

Minnie was both worldly and unworldly.

With nature she was dreamy;

He replaced the shroud. Dry-eyed, and as one filled with a cold light, he left the room.

Never before had Louis seen what Death, the cloud no bigger than a man’s hand, leaves behind it as it passes overhead and vanishes.

An upright white marble slab, in the cemetery, at the point of the promontory that juts into Lake Quannapowitt, says to the stranger wandering therein, that Anna, wife of Henri List died 2 April, 1871, aged sixty-six years.

Frank Furness was a curious character. He affected the English in fashion. He wore loud plaids, and a scowl, and from his face depended fan-like a marvelous red beard, beautiful in tone with each separate hair delicately crinkled from beginning to end.

Moreover, his face was snarled and homely as an English bulldog’s.

Louis’s eyes were riveted, in infatuation, to this beard, as he listened to a string of oaths yards long.

Louis, he said, was a fool. He said Louis was an idiot to have wasted his time in a place where one was filled with sawdust, like a doll, and became a prig, a snob, and an ass.

As the smoke blew away he said: “Of course you don’t know anything and are full of damnable conceit.”

Louis agreed to the ignorance; demurred as to conceit; and added that he belonged to that rare class who were capable of learning, and desired to learn. This answer mollified the dog-man, and he seemed intrigued that Louis stared at him so pertinaciously.

They are the giants and the fairies, the hobgoblins and the sprites; the warrior and the priest, the lowly and the high; the watchdog and the sheep; the tyrant and the slave—of that wonder-world we call speech.

How like hammers they strike. How like aspens they quiver.

How like a crystal pool, a rivulet therefrom, becomes a river moving sinuously between the hills, growing stronger, broader as its affluents pour in their tributary power; and now looms the estuary, and the Ocean of Life.

How like aspens they quiver. How like a crystal pool, a rivulet therefrom, becomes a river moving sinuously between the hills, growing stronger, broader as its affluents pour in their tributary power; and now looms the estuary, and the Ocean of Life.

Words are most malignant, the most treacherous possession of mankind. They are saturated with the sorrows of all time.

They hold in most unstable equilibrium the vast heritage of man’s folly, his despair, his wrestling with the angel whose name is Fate;

hence words are dangerous when let loose. They may mean man’s destruction, they may signify a way out of the dark.

For Light is a word, Courage is a word, and Vision is another.

Therefore, it is wise to handle words with caution. Their content is so complex and explosive; and in combinations they may work beautiful or dreadful things.

and the fatted calf was offered up in joy. The next week he spent in exploration. As everybody said: “Chicago had risen phoenix-like from its ashes.” But many ashes remained, and the sense of ruin was still blended with ambition of recovery.

Louis thought it all magnificent and wild: A crude extravaganza: An intoxicating rawness: A sense of big things to be done.

For “Big” was the word. “Biggest” was preferred, and the “biggest in the world” was the braggart phrase on every tongue. Chicago had had the biggest conflagration “in the world.” It was the biggest grain and lumber market “in the world.”

but when Louis learned that this meant that the city had determined to raise itself three feet more out of the mud, his soul declared that this resolve meant high courage; that the idea was big; that there must be big men here.

The shabby walks now became a symbol of stout hearts.

The pavements were vile, because hastily laid; they erupted here and there and everywhere in ooze. Most of the buildings, too, were paltry.

In fact, it was this “I say” and this “I will show you” that made up the charm of Monsieur Clopet’s teaching method. For Louis had but little use for what is called “proof.”

In his secret heart he did not believe that anything could be proved, but believed as firmly that many things might be shown.

From long practice as listener and observer, he had reached this conclusion, and as time went on, in his studies he became convinced that all abstractions were assumptions—that abstract truth was a mirage.

And thus the natural man ever enlarges his range of beneficence. His life experiences are real. He reverses the dictum “I think: Therefore I am.” It becomes in him,

I am: Therefore I inquire and do!

It is this affirmative “I am” that is man’s reality.

And thus the natural man ever enlarges his range of beneficence. His life experiences are real. He reverses the dictum “I think: Therefore I am.” It becomes in him, I am: Therefore I inquire and do!

It is this affirmative “I am” that is man’s reality.

Wherefore warrior, philosopher and priest turned their backs. This “I am” they could not see, could not suspect, even as it stood at their elbow regarding them with ordinary human eyes.

Our portrayal is not yet wholly clear. Let us go on. There lies another power in man. That power is moral: Its name is choice!

Within this one word, Choice, lies the story of man’s world.

It stands for the secret poise within him. It reveals as a flashlight all his imagings, his fantasies, his wilful thoughts, his deeds, from the greatest to the least, even in this gliding hour we call today.

… motives of his civilizations, but a light whose rays reach within the sanctuary of the secret thought of each and all, thus revealing the man of the past and the man of today, starkly in personal status as a social factor of beneficence or woe.

Need we know man’s thoughts? View his works, his deeds; they tell his choice.

Implicit in true freedom of spirit lies a proud and virile will. Such glorious power of free will to choose, envisages beneficent social responsibility as manifest and welcome. Here now stands in full light Man erect and conscious as a moral power.

Here now stands in full light Man erect and conscious as a moral power. The will to choose aright lifts him to the peak of social vision whence he may forecast new and true situations.

The Free Spirit is the spirit of Joy. It delights to create in beauty.

It is unafraid, it knows not fear. It declares the Earth to be its home, and the fragrance of Earth to be its inspiration. It is strong, it is mighty in beneficence. It views its powers with emotions of adventure. Humility it knows not.

… of its choice, in the full exercise of its purpose to create a world of sanity, of beauty and of joy, alone can cause to dissolve and fade into thin air as though it had never been, the baleful feudal superstition of dominion and blood-sacrifice.

This moral power residing in the multitudes and awakening to voice, is what Democracy means.

To envisage Democracy as a mechanical, political system merely, to place faith in it as such—or in any abstraction, is to foster an hallucination, to join in the Dance of Death; to confuse the hand of Esau with the voice of Jacob.

To envisage Democracy as a mechanical, political system merely, to place faith in it as such—or in any abstraction, is to foster an hallucination, to join in the Dance of Death; to confuse the hand of Esau with the voice of Jacob.

The lifting of the eyelids of the World is what Democracy means.

The implications of the Democratic Idea branch into endless ramification of science, of art, of all industrial and social activities of human well-being, through which shall flow the wholesome sap of its urge of self-preservation through beneficence, drawn up from roots running ever deeper and …

For kindness is the sanest of powers, and by its fruits shall Democracy be known. It is of the antitheses that Feudalism has prepared the way for kindness.

Kindness, seemingly so weak, is in fact the name of a great adventure which mankind thus far has lacked the courage, the intelligence, the grit to undertake.

Its manly, its heroic aspect has been unknown, by reasons of inverted notions of reality. This form of myopia is of the feudal view.

It shall allow the child to dream, to give vent to its wondrous imagination, its deep creative instinct, its romance.

It shall recognize that every child is the seat of genius; for genius is the highest form of play with Life’s forces.

It shall allow the precious being to grow in its wholesome atmosphere of activities, giving only that cultivation which a careful gardener gives—the children shall be the garden.

No dream, no aspiration, no prophecy can be saner.

Man shall find his anchorage in self-recognition.

Thus broadens and deepens to our comprehension the power and the glory of the Democratic Vista!

speaking English with easy exactitude of habit, ready and fluent on his feet, a man of quick-witted all-round culture which he carried easily and jauntily; and vain to the limit of the skies. This vanity, however, he tactfully took pains should not be too obtrusive.

He was a man of the world, of the flesh, and considerably of the devil.

His temperament was that of the well groomed freelance, never taking anything too seriously, wherein he differed from his ponderous partner, much as dragon fly and mastiff.

Thus, there came into prominence in the architectural world of Chicago two firms, Burnham & Root, and Adler & Sullivan. In each firm was a man with a fixed irrevocable purpose in life, for the sake of which he would bend or sacrifice all else.

Daniel Burnham was obsessed by the feudal idea of power. Louis Sullivan was equally obsessed by the beneficent idea of Democratic power.

Daniel chose the easier way, Louis the harder. Each brooded incessantly. John Root was so self-indulgent that there was risk he might never draw upon his underlying power;

Daniel Burnham was obsessed by the feudal idea of power. Louis Sullivan was equally obsessed by the beneficent idea of Democratic power.

Daniel chose the easier way, Louis the harder.

Each brooded incessantly. John Root was so self-indulgent that there was risk he might never draw upon his underlying power;

In other words, Louis was absurdly, grotesquely credulous. How could it be otherwise with him? He believed that most people were honest and intelligent. How could he suspect the eminent? So Louis saw the real world upside down. He was grossly ignorant.

He prospered, so the world was fair.

Later he sent forth his soul into the world and by and by his soul returned to him with an appalling message.

How could it be otherwise with him? He believed that most people were honest and intelligent. How could he suspect the eminent? So Louis saw the real world upside down. He was grossly ignorant. He prospered, so the world was fair.

Later he sent forth his soul into the world and by and by his soul returned to him with an appalling message.

For long Louis had lived in a fool’s paradise; it was well he so lived in illusion. For had the hideous truth come to him of a sudden, it would have “dashed him to pieces like a potter’s vessel.”

And, inquiring more deeply, he discovered that in truth it was not simply a matter of form expressing function, but the vital idea was this:

That the function created or organized its form.

Discernment of this idea threw a vast light upon all things within the universe, and condensed with astounding impressiveness upon mankind, upon all civilizations, all institutions, every form and aspect of society, every mass-thought and mass-result, every individual thought and individual result.

So he lived in his world, which, to be sure, was a very active world indeed. And yet, withal, he had a marked ability to interpret the physiognomy of things, to read character, to enter into personalities.

He knew a dishonest man as readily as he knew a snake if he came in contact with him.

Per contra he knew an honest man—and there were many. What delighted him was to observe the ins and outs of personality—wherein he was especially sensitive and keen to the slightest rhythms.

John was in his private room at work designing an interesting detail of some building. He drew with a rather heavy, rapid stroke, and chatted as he worked. Burnham came in.

“John,” he said, “you ought to delegate that sort of thing. The only way to handle a big business is to delegate, delegate, delegate.”

John sneered. Dan went out, in something of a huff. Louis saw the friction of ideas between the artist and the merchant; a significant mismating which made him ponder. And he watched through the years the growing of Daniel Hudson Burnham into a colossal merchandiser.

Louis at that time had not grasped the significance of choice, much less its social and antisocial phases, the ramification of its effects as a cause, its complete explanation of things that seemed veiled.

Dan Burnham had chosen.

John Root also had chosen, and he had a temper. He knew at least the value of social prestige. To be the recognized great artist, the center of acclaim and réclame was his goal.

He departed this vale of tears, and this best of all possible worlds, 15 January, 1891, at the age of forty-one, leaving in Louis’s heart and mind a deep sense of vacancy and loss. For

John Root had it in him to be great, as Burnham had it in him to be big.

John Wellborn Root in passing left a void in his wake.

then, as dusk neared, the little frame depot with its motley platform crowd; the crippled hacks, the drive to the old hotel, pigs and cows wandering familiarly in the streets, all passing into silhouette, for night comes fast.

Ah, what delight, what luxury of peace within the velvety caressing air, the odor of the waters and the pines.

With daylight there revealed itself an undulating village all in bloom in softest sunshine, the gentle sparkle of the waters of a bay landlocked by Deer Island; a village sleeping as it had slept for generations with untroubled surface;

no “enterprise,” no “progress,” no booming for a “Greater Ocean Springs,” no factories, no anxious faces, no glare of the dollar hunter, no land agents, no hustlers, no drummers, no white-staked lonely subdivisions.

Peace, peace, and the joy of comrades, the lovely nights of sea breeze, black pool of the sky oversprinkled with stars brilliant and uncountable.

Here in this haven, this peaceful quiescence, Louis’s nerves, long taut with insomnia, yielded and renewed their life. In two weeks he was well and sound.

never came the sense of immortality: One life surely is enough if lived and fulfilled: That we have yet to learn the true significance of man; to realize the destruction we have wrought; to come to a consciousness of our moral instability:

For man is godlike enough did he but know it⁠—did he but choose, did he but remove his wrappings and his blinders, and say goodbye to his superstitions and his fear.

Arrived in Chicago, Louis at once went to work with his old-time vim. Important work was at hand in other cities as well as in Chicago. The steel-frame form of construction had come into use.

Louis welcomed new problems as challenges and tests.

He had worked out a theory that every problem contains and suggests its own solution.

That a postulate which does not contain and suggest its solution is not in any sense a problem, but a misstatement of fact or an incomplete one. He had reached a conviction that this formula is universal in its nature and in application.

He visualized its main rhythms as south to north, and north to south; that in crossing the continent at various parallels from east to west, or west to east, one obtained superb cross-sections.

And he dramatized the land and the seasons.

He saw, as a vast moving picture, Spring, coming from the Gulf, moving gently northward, its Vanguard awakening that which sleeps;

… and northward, moving in superb rhythms of alternate urging, o’er the expanse of what was once a virgin sleeping continent, now peopled by millions with one language in common, but no soul, a people unaware, their shadows rummaging like swine in the muck of cupidity.

A people of enormous power⁠—and devil take the hindmost.

A time of laissez faire and unto him that hath, if he can grab it, shall be given; with here and there a soul pleading for kindness, and peace, and sanity.

Again the flaming banners and the field of white.

Northward and southward, southward and northward, moving in superb rhythms of alternate urging, o’er the expanse of what was once a virgin sleeping continent, now peopled by millions with one language in common, but no soul, a people unaware, their shadows rummaging like swine in the muck of cupidity.

A people of enormous power—and devil take the hindmost. A time of laissez faire and unto him that hath, if he can grab it, shall be given; with here and there a soul pleading for kindness, and peace, and sanity.

Referring again to the essay: Louis thought he would try it on the higher culture. So he sent a copy to his aged friend, Professor of Latin in the University of Michigan, who wrote in return:

“The language is beautiful, but what on earth you are talking about I have not the faintest idea.”

Alas, an arm chair and a class room have been known to shut out the world.

So he sent a copy to his aged friend, Professor of Latin in the University of Michigan, who wrote in return: “The language is beautiful, but what on earth you are talking about I have not the faintest idea.”

Alas, an arm chair and a class room have been known to shut out the world.

In Chicago, the progress of the building art from 1880 onward was phenomenal. The earlier days had been given over to four-inch ashlar fronts, cylinder glass, and galvanized iron cornices, with cast iron columns and lintels below;

Yet his earthly career is not ended; for soon he goes forth again into the work—much subdivided it is true—to seek out the tables of rich and poor alike, there to be welcomed and rejoiced in as benefactor of mankind.

Thus may a hog rise to the heights of altruism.

It does not pay to assume lowly origins as finalities, for it is shown that good may come out of the sty, as out of the manger.

Again the train moves on, stops, and moves on. In due time what was once the pink and white suckling, meets the man with the knife.

But he is not murdered, he is merely slaughtered.

Yet his earthly career is not ended; for soon he goes forth again into the work—much subdivided it is true—to seek out the tables of rich and poor alike, there to be welcomed and rejoiced in as benefactor of mankind.

As this was to be a big jump from nine stories, construction was postponed until it should be seen whether or not the Auditorium Tower would go to China of its own free will.

The great tower, however, politely declined to go to China, or rudely rack the main building, because it had been trained by its architects concerning the etiquette of the situation

, and, like a good and gentle tower, quietly responded to a manipulation of pig iron within its base. Then the “Monadnock” went ahead;

As a rule, inventions—which are truly solutions—are not arrived at quickly. They may seem to appear suddenly, but the groundwork has usually been long in preparing.

It is of the essence of this philosophy that man’s needs are balanced by his powers.

That as the needs increase the powers increase—that is one reason why they are herein called powers.

Their own ground work thus was prepared. It was a matter of vision in salesmanship based upon engineering imagination and technique. Thus the idea of a steel frame which should carry all the load was tentatively presented to Chicago architects.

The passion to sell is the impelling power in American life.

Manufacturing is subsidiary and adventitious. But selling must be based on a semblance of service—the satisfaction of a need. The need was there, the capacity to satisfy was there, but contact was not there. Then came the flash of imagination which saw the single thing.

The social significance of the tall building is in finality its most important phase. In and by itself, considered solus so to speak, the lofty steel frame makes a powerful appeal to the architectural imagination where there is any.

Where imagination is absent and its place usurped by timid pedantry the case is hopeless.

The appeal and the inspiration lie, of course, in the element of loftiness, in the suggestion of slenderness and aspiration, the soaring quality as of a thing rising from the earth as a unitary utterance, Dionysian in beauty.

The construction and mechanical equipment soon developed into engineering triumphs. Architects, with a considerable measure of success, undertook to give a commensurate external treatment. The art of design in Chicago had begun to take on a recognizable character of its own. The future looked bright.

The flag was in the breeze. Yet a small white cloud no bigger than a man’s hand was soon to appear above the horizon.

The name of this cloud was eighteen hundred and ninety-three. Following the little white cloud was a dark dim cloud, more like a fog. The name of the second cloud was Baring Brothers.

immense mineral wealth had been unearthed in Colorado, South Dakota, Northern Wisconsin, Peninsular Michigan, the Mesaba Range in Minnesota. The ambitious trader sought to corner markets.

The “corner” had become an ideal, a holy grail.

Monopoly was in the air. Wall Street was a seething cauldron. The populace looked on, with open-mouthed amazement and approval, at the mighty men who wrought these wonders;

“Think of a man like Morgan, who can take a man like Cassatt in the palm of his hand and set him on the throne of the Pennsylvania!”

And thus, in its way, the populace sang hymns to its heroes.

The people rejoiced. Each individual rejoiced in envious admiration, and all rejoiced in the thought that these great men, these mighty men, had, with few and negligible exceptions, risen from the ranks of the common people:

This, they cried, as one voice, is the Hospitable Land that welcomes the stranger at its gates. This is the great Democracy where all men are equal and free.

All this they sang gladly as they moved up the runways.

Thus the Land was stirring and quivering in impulses, wave upon wave. The stream of immigration was enormous, spreading over vast areas, burrowing in the mines, or clinging to the cities. Chicago had passed St. Louis in population and was proud.

Chicago was booming. It had become a powerful magnet. Its people had one dream in common: That their city should become the world’s metropolis. There was great enthusiasm and public spirit. So things stood, in the years 1890, 1891 and 1892.

John Root had said to Louis: “You take your art too seriously.” Burnham had said to Louis: “It is not good policy to go much above the general level of intelligence.”

Burnham had also said: “See! Louis, how beautiful the moon is, now, overhead, how tender. Something in her beauty suggests tears to me.”