This view would also explain the discrepancy between architectural determination and actual architectural creation of this period: the perceived images of an ideal style tended to subjugate the ritual compulsion of interpreting human imperfection.
The venerating intoxication underlying the ritual finds its worldly resonance in the craze for money, the craze in art, the drunkenness arising from great inventions, all of which contributed to the greatness of this era.
The trance that thus permeated each strain of activity is the period's distinctive trait explaining its contiguity, whereas the ritual repetition is the most important underlying phenomenon of the period's cult-like veneration of historic styles.
*) (Viollet-Le-Duc for the Gothic, but also James Ferguson for the Renaissance, cit. in History of the Modern Styles of Architecture, by Nikolaus Pevsner)
